chj-summer-2004

Conservative History 

ANDREW ROBERTS 

A TORY HISTORIAN 

SPEAKS OUT 

GEOFFREY HICKS 

LORD DERBY’S SHADOWY 

FOREIGN SECRETARY 

MARK COALTER 

DISRAELI’S 1872 BLUEPRINT 

FOR ELECTORAL SUCCESS 

BENDOR GROSVENOR 

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: 

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE 

PRIME MINISTER 

HARSHAN KUMARASINGHAM 

THE POLITICAL DEMISE OF 

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN 

The journal of the Conservative History Group | Summer 2004 | £7.50 

Journal 

THATCHER 

NORMAN TEBBIT and GEOFFREY HOWE 

on the Iron Lady’s legacy twenty-five years since she swept to power 

Plus: Helen Szamuely on Margaret Thatcher’s speeches; John Barnes on 

political party colours; Nicholas Hillman on Thatcher’s musical legacy; 

Mark Garnett reviews four new books on Michael Oakeshott and Ronald 

Porter reviews Anne de Courcy’s biography of Diana Mosley

Contents 

Conservative History Journal 

The Conservative History Journal is published twice 

yearly by the Conservative History Group 

ISSN 1479-8026 

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call Helen Szamuely on 07733 018999 

Editorial/Correspondence 

Contributions to the Journal – letters, articles and 

book reviews are invited. The Journal is a refereed 

publication; all articles submitted will be reviewed 

and publication is not guaranteed. Contributions 

should be emailed or posted to the addresses below. 

All articles remain copyright © their authors 

Subscriptions/Membership 

An annual subscription to the Conservative History 

Group costs £15. Copies of the Journal are included 

in the membership fee. 

The Conservative History Group 

Chairman: Keith Simpson MP 

Deputy Chairman: Professor John Charmley 

Director: Iain Dale 

Treasurer: John Strafford 

Secretary: Martin Ball 

Membership Secretary: Peter Just 

Journal Editors: John Barnes & Helen Szamuely 

Committee: 

Christina Dykes 

Lord Norton of Louth 

Lord Brooke 

Jonathan Collett 

Simon Gordon 

Mark Garnett 

Ian Pendlington 

David Ruffley MP 

Quentin Davies MP 

William Dorman 

Graham Smith 

Jeremy Savage 

Lord Henley 

William McDougall 

Tricia Gurnett 

Conservative History Group 

PO Box 42119 

London 

SW8 1WJ 

Telephone: 07768 254690 

Email: info@conservativehistory.org.uk 

Website: www.conservativehistory.org.uk 

Contents 

Definitely not a farewell 1 

Iain Dale 

Good try, but must do better 2 

Helen Szamuely 

A Tory historian speaks out 3 

Helen Szamuely talks to Andrew Roberts 

Thatcher 7 

Norman Tebbit and Geoffrey Howe on the Iron Lady’s legacy 

Hilda’s Cabinet Band 9 

Nicholas Hillman 

A strangely familiar voice 12 


The political demise of Neville Chamberlain 13 

Harshan Kumarasingham 

Capturing the middle ground: 

Disraeli’s 1872 Blueprint for electoral success 17 

Mark Coalter 

Lord Derby’s shadowy Foreign Secretary 22 

Geoffrey Hicks 

The man who would be Prime Minister: 

Sir Stafford Northcote Bart 24 

Bendor Grosvenor 

Party colours 27 

John Barnes 

Book Reviews 

Mark Garnett on four new books about Michael Oakshott 30 

Diana Mosley by Anne de Courcy 31 

reviewed by Ronald Porter 

www.conservativehistory.org.uk

Definitely not a farewell 

Iain Dale 

A 

fter a mere two isues I have decided 

to step down as co-editor of the 

Conservative History Journal but I 

am delighted that Helen Szamuely 

has agreed to step into the breach. 

She will bring a degree of thoroughness and historical 

perspective which I could never match. While I 

shall remain Director of the CHG I must devote my 

time now to my business and, perhaps more importantly, 

to winning back North Norfolk at the next 

election. This issue of the magazine is particularly 

important as it marks the 25th anniversary of the 

election of the Thatcher Government in May 1979. I 

remember it especially well as I stood as the 

Conservative Candidate in a mock election at my 

High School in Essex and romped home with a 27% 

majority over....the National Front! Margaret 

Thatcher inspired me to get involved in politics. In 

her day we used to win elections almost at will. I 

remember what it was like standing on people's 

doorsteps knowing that what I was doing was helping 

her retain power. It's that kind of pride which we 

Conservatives now have to instill into our party 

workers up and down the country. They have to know 

that Michael Howard and candidates like me are not 

only worth campaigning for but, once we are successful, 

we will do justice to the legacy which 

Margaret Thatcher has left us. 

Conservative History Group 

Party Conference Fringe 

William 

Hague 

will speak on 

William Pitt 

the Younger 

Iain Dale is the 

Conservative 

Parliamentary Spokesman 

for North Norfolk. Email 

him on iain@iaindale.com. 

Monday 4 October 

17.45–19.00 

Purbeck Bar in the Bournemouth International Conference Centre 

Conservative History Journal | issue 3 | Summer 2004 | 1

Good try, but must do better 


It is not, perhaps, the most auspicious way to 

start one’s stint as co-editor of this Journal, 

having to apologize for the issue’s late appearance. 

All I can say in my self-defence is that 

the last few months have been a steep learning 

curve. However, that is all behind me and I hope that 

the quality of this and future issues will live up to the 

excellent reputation the Conservative History Journal 

deservedly acquired under Iain Dale’s editorship. 

Though a couple of months late we are celebrating 

in this issue the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first 

Thatcher government and we decided that the best 

way to do so would be to ask two of her colleagues, 

Lord Howe and Lord Tebbit, to give us their views on 

the phenomenon of Thatcherism. We are proud to 

present their insight along with a couple of other articles 

that cover other aspects of the subject. 

The fascinating, entertaining and instructive interview 

with Andrew Roberts, one of our leading historians, 

will, we hope be the first of a whole series of 

interviews on the subject of Conservative or Tory history. 

Roberts, a widely respected historian and a brilliant 

wordsmith, is also a supporter of the 

Conservative History Group and of this Journal. 

From the successful to the unsuccessful twentieth 

century Prime Minister. May also saw the anniverasry 

of the fall of Chamberlain’s government and with it 

the destruction of his political reputation. We have an 

article from an historian in New Zealand on those 

The Conservative History Group 

2 | Conservative History Journal | issue 3 | Summer 2004 

events and the theme of Churchill’s government is 

taken up by Ronald Porter, if somewhat obliquely, in 

his review of the latest biography of Diana Mosley. 

A characteristically entertaining piece by the co-editor 

of this Journal, John Barnes, deals with the important 

but somewhat neglected subject of party colours. 

Conservative history has to look beyond the twentieth 

century and there is a section in this issue on 

Disraeli, another great Conservative Prime Minister 

and two of his colleagues. In future editions we hope 

to cover many other aspects of Conservative and Tory 

history and historiography, going back certainly to the 

eighteenth but, even, the seventeenth century. 

We hope to write about Conservative political 

thought as in the review of several books on Michael 

Oakeshott and we shall have entertaining and, who 

knows, perhaps slightly scurrillous pieces about Tory 

and Conservative politicians, as well as forgotten or 

little known aspects of party history. We have great 

plans to expand our subject matter to include subjects 

to do with Conservative history in the United States 

and the Commonwealth countries. 

The next issue will appear at the end of September 

- timing will be constrained by the Party Conference 

- and thereafter the Journal will be published twice 

yearly at the end of March and September. We are 

looking for contributions, articles, ideas, suggestions. 

The Conservative History Journal had a great start. 

After a slight hiccup it will have a great future. 

As the Conservative Party regroups after two general election defeats, learning from history is perhaps more vital than ever, We formed the 

Conservative History Group in the Autumn of 2002 to promote the discussion and debate of all aspects of Conservative history. We have 

organised a wide-ranging programme of speaker meetings in our first year and with the bi-annual publication of the Conservative History 

Journal, we hope to provide a forum for serious and indepth articles on Conservative history, biographies of leading and more obscure 

Conservative figures, as well as book reviews and profiles. For an annual subscription of only £15 you will receive invites to all our events as 

well as complimentary copies of the Conservative History Journal twice a year. We very much hope you will want to join us and become part 

of one of the Conservative Party's most vibrant discussion groups. 

Please fill in and return this form if you would like to join the Conservative History Group 

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Send your details with your subscription of £15 to Conservative History Group, PO Box 42119, London SW8 1WJ 

Or you can join online at www.politicos.co.uk 

Helen Szamuely is the new 

co-editor of the Conservative 

History Journal. Email her 

on szamuely@aol.com.

A Tory historian 

speaks . . . 

In the first of a new series of interviews with 

Conservative historians Helen Szamuely 

meets Andrew Roberts 

Andrew Roberts is one of the new 

group of historians that has made 

modern British historiography internationally 

respected and domestically 

popular. As a man of the right, he 

has had various insults heaped on 

him by the more left-leaning media. 

Among other things he has been 

called a warmonger, an extremist 

(naturally) and a conservative historian, 

thus implying that his writings 

lack objectivity. Noticeably, none of 

the detractors have managed to point 

to any lack of research or objectivity 

but this has not lessened their ardour. 

Mr Roberts says that he is a Tory 

rather than a Conservative and 

insists that there is no such thing as a 

conservative historian. But he is 

proud of his political views (understandably) 

and is active in a number 

of organizations, such as the Bruges 

Group, the Freedom Association, the 

British Weights and Measures 

Association and the Centre for Policy 

Studies. What they all have in common 

is a high regard for the traditional 

liberties that have long been 

associated with Britain and the 

British people and are now under 

threat from inside and outside. Here 

Andrew Roberts gives his views on 

history, its study and its writing, as 

well as politics to Helen Szamuely. 

HS: Andrew, thank you very much for 

agreeing to this interview. To start 

with, let’s go back to basics, as a certain 

Conservative Prime Minister 

once said. 

AR: You’re right to say that he was a 

Conservative Prime Minister but he 

was not in any sense a Tory Prime 

Minister. 

HS: That is very true, of course. Let’s 

say a Prime Minister who led the 

Conservative Party, though I suppose 

we could quibble about that as well. 

AR: I think the word “leadership” is 

something I would pick you up on. 

Sorry. 

HS: Well, let us get past that one. You 

have been described by friend and 

foe, and we are definitely friends, as 

a “conservative historian”. Would 

you describe yourself as a “conservative 

historian”? 

AR: No, I emphatically would not. I 

think that the methods that conservatives 

as historians use, should be precisely 

the same as those used by a 

socialist or a whig or a marxist. We 

have to use exactly the same rigorous 

level of objectivity and so to be 

described as an historian who is coming 

from any angle at all is, I think, 

damaging and unfair. However, I am 

an historian who is a Conservative. 

And I am also an historian who writes 

more often about Conservatives and 

Conservative governments than other 

kinds, but I think that once you 

attempt to pigeonhole an historian for 

his political views you get into very 

dangerous territory with regards to 

his objectivity, which is an absolute 

prerequisite for his professionalism. 

HS: So, would you say that there is no 

such thing as Conservative history 

writing. Most people would know 

what we mean by Whig history writing. 

Is there a similar idea of 

Conservative history writing? 

AR: This is a very interesting point. 

Very roughly, Whigs believe in a 


Andrew Roberts 

sense of progress, Marxists believe 

in dialectical materialism and class 

warfare and there is, in my view, a 

strand of Tory historicism, or historiography, 

in which mankind is not 

seen as moving towards any preordained 

end and is certainly not seen 

as moving in any straight direction 

either. History, in my view, zig-zags. 

Instead of being a locomotive that is 

moving to a destination, it can be 

shunted into sidings as it was, for 

instance, between 1914 and 1989; it 

can go into reverse as it has done 

several times. I think that should be 

the Tory philosophy of history. 

Without getting too much into 

semantics, the words Tory and 

Conservative, I have always 

believed, should be kept rigidly 

apart. The way they are interchangeable 

in journalism, I think, does the 

Tories a great disservice because the 

Conservative party in parliament - in 

opposition as well as in government 

- very rarely sticks to rigid Tory 

principles, more’s the shame. And it 

is possible to be a Tory, as one could 

be between November 1990 and 

May 1997, without believing that 

the Conservative party is doing very 

much good. 

HS: If you look back on historians of 

the past, whom would you describe 

as Tory historians? 

AR: Interestingly, several of the ones 

I would call Tory historians, would 

not have considered themselves to 

be Tories or, indeed, Conservatives. 

But I would look to the people, who 

really stand up against whiggish and 

marxist views of history. I’d mention 

Norman Stone, J.D.C.Clark, 

Maurice Cowling, Niall Ferguson, 

going back a bit, I think Edward 

Gibbon, G.R.Elton, Hugh Dacre, 

A.L.Rowse, and others. People, 

who, like me, do not believe that 

mankind is on a natural progression 

to the betterment or the brotherhood 

of man. 

HS: Most people would mention 

Lord Acton. What is your view on 

him? 


AR: His History of Liberty was 

one of the great unwritten books of 

the world. Had he written a major 

work of history, I think it would 

have been one that would have 

emphasised the dangers and the 

threats to liberty as much as the 

benefits. 

HS: A lot of people would say: oh 

yes, Tories, they do not, unlike, say 

Whigs or Liberals, believe in the 

concept of freedom, of liberty. 

Would you consider liberty an 

important subject for Tory historiography? 

AR: I think it very much is and it is a 

great shame that nobody of Acton’s 

stature has written a history of liberty. 

Nor is there a particularly good 

biography of John Wilkes, the early 

progenitor of eighteenth century liberty. 

What men then called a real 

and manly liberty. I would like to 

take issue with you over the idea that 

we as Tories think more about order 

and established power than liberty. I 

think, for example, that John 

Hampden was a Tory before the 

Tory party came into existence and I 

think that there is a very, very strong 

tradition, especially in terms of 

jurisprudence, a very strong Tory 

belief in the kind of liberty that is 

enunciated in the English 

Revolution and in the common law. 

What common law gives us - and it 

is, of course, now under threat from 

New Labour and from the European 

Union - is a massive ancient codification 

of customs and traditions and 

precedent, that does not circumscribe 

a Briton’s liberty but allows 

him to act in a way that does not 

damage or threaten his neighbour. 

And you can’t get more Tory than 

that. 

HS: I think we’ll stick to the word 

“Tory”. Once you start getting on to 

the Conservative Party and the 

notion of “conservative” with a 

small “c”, you get into serious 

problems. Some of the most conservative 

organizations are actually 

socialist. 

AR: Precisely. Nothing was more 

conservative than the National Union 

of Mineworkers, for example. 

HS: Except, maybe the TUC. This 

brings us rather neatly to the 

Thatcher government. With a bit of 

luck when this issue of the Journal 

comes out, we shall be celebrating, 

or, perhaps, some people will be 

mourning, the twenty-fifth anniversary 

of Mrs Thatcher winning her 

first election. If you were to write the 

history of the Thatcher government, 

not perhaps now, but, say in ten 

years’ time, how would you approach 

it? What would be the good things 

you’d say about it, what would be the 

not so good things? 

AR: My view is that the book cannot 

be written until the thirty year rule is 

up for the 1979 to 1990 period. So it 

“ History, in my view, zig-zags. Instead 

of being a locomotive that is moving to 

a destination, it can be shunted into 

sidings as it was, for instance, between 

1914 and 1989; it can go into reverse 

as it has done several times ” 

can’t even be researched until January 

2011. And after that it would take a 

good four or five years just to work 

your way through the various papers. 

I think that an intelligent biographer 

of Mrs Thatcher - and luckily we 

have Charles Moore doing that, a perfect 

example of a Tory who isn’t 

always a Conservative - of her government 

as well as of her, will look at 

the fascinating dichotomy between 

rhetoric and practice, which happens 

in every government, of course, but 

was there even more startlingly with 

Margaret Thatcher. Her rhetoric was 

so powerful and so, too, was her practice, 

but there were several occasions 

(one thinks of the threat of the miners’ 

strike in 1981, for instance) when 

she backed down. And she had been 

much tougher in opposition on subjects 

like Rhodesia and immigration

than she turned out to be when she 

got into power. So I think there is an 

angle for a Tory historian to take 

Margaret Thatcher to task from the 

Right and to ask what happened to 

many of the hopes. However, one has 

to remember at all times that she was 

five hundred per cent better than anyone 

could have possibly hoped for in 

any political period for the Tories 

from 1945 up to her election in 1975. 

It was an astonishing stroke of luck 

that she won the party leadership and 

although an historian must be objective, 

that element of luck is a very 

important one. I am just about to publish 

a book called What Might Have 

Been, which is going to talk about the 

power of luck in history. We have 

some good Tories writing for it. I am 

thinking of Simon Heffer, Norman 

Stone, Conrad Black, David Frum. 

Though it is not a Conservative or a 

right-wing book, it does have a few 

“ I think there is an angle for a Tory 

historian to take Margaret Thatcher to 

task from the Right and to ask what 

happened to many of the hopes ” 

sound people writing for it and it does 

bring it home to me again and again, 

the element of luck. Simon Heffer 

writes about Margaret Thatcher being 

blown up in Brighton and what would 

have happened had she died back in 

1984. When one thinks of those years 

from 1979 to 1990, any number of 

chance occurrences could have 

derailed the Thatcher experiment. We 

see it, perhaps because it also 

spanned the decade of the eighties, as 

a great monolithic, almost predestined, 

ministry. 

HS: Yes, there is a tendency to 

emphasise that, partly by her and 

partly by that famous story of 

Callaghan’s about him driving home 

on the night of the election and saying 

that it did not matter, there was 

nothing he could do, there was a 

wind blowing the other way; but that 

is not at all how one remembers the 

election of 1979: not as a predestined 

event but just as another election. 

Most of us, I think, except maybe the 

few people close to Margaret 

Thatcher, probably did not realize 

that this was going to be a very different 

premiership. 

AR: No, that’s right. I am rather sceptical 

of what Jim Callaghan said 

because … well, first of all, a losing 

politician is going to blame what T. S. 

Eliot called “the vast impersonal 

forces” for his defeat. But, in fact, 

when one looks at general elections, 

any number of tiny, perhaps at the 

time inconsequential factors, could 

be playing on the minds of the electorate. 

Pollsters should be really 

quizzing people as they come out of 

the polling booths, not the day before 

elections or the day before that, but as 

they come out. They should be asking 

people precisely what mattered to 

them, why they voted and instead of 

giving them lists to choose from, 

where the person automatically 

chooses the most high-minded reason, 

they should simply wait until 

they get the reply. We do this a bit 

with book-buying. When somebody 

comes out of a bookshop, he might be 

asked by a polling organization: was 

it the review; was it the front cover; 

was it the fact that he had read the 

author before; what was the reason 

for buying this book. And the results 

you get are very very different usually 

from the ones you are expecting. 

People go into bookshops and buy 

completely different books from the 

one they were intending to as they 

walk through. And I wonder to what 

extent that is true of politics that people 

wind up at the end of an election 

campaign voting in a completely different 

way from the way they were 

intending to at the beginning of it. So 

when people get very aerated about 

things a year or two before the campaign, 

I wonder to what extent those 

kind of issues really matter compared 

to the ones that are actually being 

fought over during the campaign 

itself. There ought to be really serious 

and practical studies of this, but if 

there are I haven’t read any. 


HS: I haven’t seen any. Questions tend 

to be along the lines of would you 

agree to pay more tax if the money 

went to the health service and everybody 

says yes and then votes for the 

party that says no more tax rises. 

AR: Well, I consider that a very 

healthy thing, of course. Hypocrisy to 

pollsters is a very emotionally uplifting 

concept. 

HS: It is. And I think most people 

have got to the stage of not telling 

pollsters the truth. Just to go back to 

history as a subject. We are in a very 

strange situation in this country in 

that the teaching of history has virtually 

died out in schools. Certainly, in 

the state sector it is hardly ever taught 

and in some universities, when one 

looks at what they teach one shudders. 

At the same time, the writing of 

history and the reading of history 

have become very popular. People 

buy books, people watch serious programmes 

about history. How do you 

see the connection between these two 

developments? 

AR: I think there is a direct correlation 

between the second-rate teaching 

of history in schools and the 

thirst for historical knowledge that 

people have by the time they leave 

full-time education. It is a sad reflection 

that I am probably making a living 

out of the collapse of history 

teaching in primary and secondary 

and, to a large extent, tertiary education. 

But there we are. I am and so 

are an awful lot of other people. I 

think that history ought to be taught 

in narrative terms; I think it ought to 

be taught chronologically; I think 

that the older a child gets the further 

down the story he ought to be 

brought. So the Tudors and Stuarts 

are ideal for children at the age of 

thirteen and fourteen and the Second 

World War and the First World War 

shouldn’t be really taught until the 

children are just about to take their 

final leaving exams. And when children 

are at primary school, then wattle-and-daub 

houses and motte-andbailey 

castles are ideal, too. I really 



do think that unless you see history 

in its full chronological narrative 

sense you can’t really appreciate it. I 

hate the way that first of all schoolchildren 

are constantly taught the 

Nazis again and again when it hasn’t 

been put into proper historical perspective. 

There is an amazing gold- 

“ Tony Blair basically believes that 

history began on the morning of the 

2nd May 1997 ” 

en age of history writing at the 

moment. This has to be related in 

some way to the collapse of history 

teaching in our education system. 

Having said that, I am not sure that 

it is not just going to be a fad. It has 

been around for only five or six or 

seven years and all it would take, I 

think, would be for some big and 

powerful people in the BBC and various 

other places to say: “Right, 

that’s enough history. Let’s now 

move on to science.” Or “We ought 

to be concentrating now on some 

other area of human endeavour.” for 

the tap to be turned off. Obviously, 

that can’t be done in book publishing 

but it certainly can be in the TV 

world. And so, all that we can do is 

to keep our fingers crossed that really 

talented historians who can make 

first-class TV series, like Simon 

Schama, David Starkey and Niall 

Ferguson, should continue to do so, 

“ Society is a combination of the 

living, the dead and those yet to be 

born. And so history is a part of 

society’s present day existence as 

much as that of the past ” 

because I think there is a huge 

knock-on effect for people who will 

watch, say, Niall’s programmes on 

empire, will then take one of the 

fifty or so ideas that come from it 

and look more closely into them and 

buy books on some of them. That 

has to be a good thing, especially as 


I am convinced that there is an 

external as well as an internal threat 

to British understanding of British 

history. It’s constantly being debellicised. 

The kind of propaganda that 

we keep getting out of the European 

Union, and some of our newspapers 

are very good at spotting this, others 

aren’t, constantly tries to make 

Britain out to be yet another 

European country that does not have 

a completely unique historical background. 

And that’s tremendously 

dangerous because after a generation 

of being taught this a new generation 

of schoolchildren will come to maturity 

and voting age believing it. And 

if they do, that will not only betray 

them because that is untrue - Britain 

does have a history unlike any other 

nation - but it is also going to let the 

country down. 

HS: I think one of the sad things about 

the study of history is that one is endlessly 

asked - I am sure you were 

when you first started studying it and 

I remember it - why does one want to 

study it. It’s just lots of stories about 

dead people. What does it matter? A 

particularly dangerous part of that is 

that politicians are very apt to say 

this. Now, one might say who cares 

what politicians have to say but they 

do have a lot of power. 

AR: Well, Charles Clarke has, of 

course, spoken against the teaching 

of mediaeval history. 

HS: Indeed back in the sixties, I think 

it was Edward Short, who was 

Education Secretary under Wilson, 

who said that it was more important 

for children to know about the 

Vietnam War, which was still going 

on at the time than about the Wars of 

the Roses. So the rot set in, perhaps, 

with that government. 

AR: And also, of course, Tony Blair 

basically believes that history began 

on the morning of the 2nd May 1997. 

HS: Yes, that is an extremely unfortunate 

part of it all. Now if a Minister of 

Education from a forthcoming 

Conservative government, as it is 

unlikely to be a Tory government, 

came to you and said: “Why do you 

think we should concentrate on teaching 

history at school?”, what would 

you answer? 

AR: I would say: “Why do you think 

it is important for your brain to have 

a memory?” And I would also argue 

to those - and this is a truly Tory 

argument, one that Burke would 

have appreciated: I would say that 

why should experiences of the living 

be given any superiroity over those 

of the dead? Society is a combination 

of the living, the dead and those 

yet to be born. And so history is a 

part of society’s present day existence 

as much as that of the past. 

Especially in a country like this one. 

Tony Blair says we’re a new country. 

No, we’re not! Of course we’re not a 

new country. You walk out into any 

street and you will immediately see 

that we are not a new country. We 

are not Arizona. It is completely 

absurd to argue that we are because 

every step we take reminds us that 

we are not. And the other thing, of 

course, is that we never learn from 

history. You look again and again at 

problems and the way in which the 

world tries to deal with them is pretty 

much the way it has done in the 

past. The same problems, in fact, 

that face Tony Blair at the moment 

in terms of House of Lords reform, 

devolution, the Balkans, faced Lord 

Rosebery. And, don’t think that Mr 

Blair’s answers to them are any more 

well-informed or likely to be successful 

than were Rosebery’s. If we 

didn’t know what had been done in 

the past, we would be like the chap 

who wakes up every morning in the 

movie Memento. He’d lost his memory 

and he wakes up every morning 

and remembers nothing and has to 

find his way forward from snapshots 

he had taken. That would be what we 

would be like if a future minister 

tries to axe history even more than it 

has been deleted already from the 

national curriculum. 

HS: Andrew, thank you very much.

THATCHER 

Her legacy for the Conservatives and for Britain 

25 years on from Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 general election victory the Conservative History Journal examines her 

legacy. In this first article Norman Tebbit and Geoffrey Howe offer their different perspectives on her premiership; 

in further articles Nicholas Hillman examines the Iron Lady’s surprising influence on the world of pop music and 

Helen Szamuely reflects on the speeches of one of the twentieth century’s finest orators. 

Norman Tebbit was a close ally of 

Margaret Thatcher both in opposition 

and in government. He served as her 

Secretary of State for Employment, 

Secretary of State for Trade and 

Industry and President of the Board 

of Trade. Between 1985 and 1987 he 

was Chancellor of the Duchy of 

Lancaster and Party Chairman. As 

the latter, he was credited with the 

strategy behind the third 

Conservative electoral victory. 

During the Brighton hotel bombing 

Norman Tebbit was seriously injured 

and his wife, Margaret, permanently 

disabled. He retired from the House 

of Commons in 1992 and became 

Baron Tebbit of Chingford. Here he 

gives his perspective on the Thatcher 

government. 

Norman Tebbit 

recieves a standing 

ovation after his 

speech to the 

Conservative Party 

Conference in 

1981. Margaret 

Thatcher and Cecil 

Parkinson join in 

the applause. 

Margaret Thatcher 

took office as 

Prime Minister of a 

country possessed 

by both hope and 

fear. The Heath government had been 

defeated following its failure to 

defeat a miners’ strike in 1974. The 

Callaghan government fell in 1979 , 

following the “winter of discontent” 

during the strike of local government 

workers. Many voters hoped she 

would go the same way. Rather more 

hoped she would not - but many even 

of these feared that she might. 

Foreign embassies were reporting 

to their governments that Britain had 

become ungovernable. Multi-national 

companies had all but ceased to 

invest as the English Disease, a lemming-like 

propensity to strike, savaged 

businesses. The vast stateowned 

sector of industry gorged 

itself on taxpayers’ money with no 

prospects of profitability. 

Inflation was endemic and conventional 

wisdom held that it could be 

restrained only by a state sponsored 

“prices and incomes policy”, that is 


Thatcher 

either voluntary or state control of 

prices and incomes. 

During Margaret Thatcher’s term 

British industrial relations changed 

from the worst in the developed free 

world to the best. 

She went on to win two further elections, 

defeated the unions’ “nuclear 

option” of a miners’ strike, and was 

brought down not by an ungovernable 

nation - but an ungovernable cabinet. 

In the meantime inflation had been 

controlled by monetarism - not 

incomes policy - and foreign ivestment 

had poured into Britain. The 

financial haemorrhage of the nationalised 

industries had been stanched. 

After privatisation they became profitable 

corporation taxpayers. 

Living standards soared, millions 

Geoffrey Howe was Margaret 

Thatcher’s longest standing Cabinet 

minister, serving as Chancellor of the 

Exchequer, Secretary of State for 

Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs 

and Leader of the House of 

Commons. He resigned on November 

1, 1990 with a thunderous speech in 


of the “working classes” had become 

homeowners and shareholders and 

Britain’s occupational pension 

schemes were the envy of Europe. 

In passing Margaret Thatcher 

defeated Argentina, bringing down 

the junta and by a military operation 

“ Living standards soared, millions of 

the “working classes” had become 

homeownders and shareholders ” 

pursued with purpose, skill and daring, 

established that Britain still had 

the will and power to defend unilaterally 

its people and its interest. 

She left a great deal still undone, 

having had neither time - nor enough 

the House of Commons that is widely 

thought to have hastened Thatcher’s 

own downfall three weeks later. 

Geoffrey Howe retired from the 

House of Commons in 1992 and 

became Baron Howe of Aberavon. 

Here he gives his views of the 

Thatcher government. 

competent Ministers with courage to 

resolve other issues. Neither education, 

the Health Service, nor the welfare 

system were properly reformed. 

Local government finance reform 

was botched by Christopher Patten. 

Reform of the European Community 

was sabotaged by Geoffrey Howe. 

Nor did Thatcherism cure the sickness 

of the permissive society, which 

has - as some forecast - become the 

yob society of the 21st century. 

Abroad Margaret Thatcher stiffened 

the resolve of President Reagan 

to defeat the challenge of the Soviet 

Union and bring a decisive victory in 

the Cold War. “Thatcherism” was 

widely adopted throughout the world. 

So much achieved - so much more 

to be done. 

No government, in my 

judgment, did more in 

the last quarter of the 

twentieth century to 

change the shape of 

our world. Some mistakes, of course 

- but overall it was fundamental and 

enduring change for the better. 

Margaret Thatcher’s most important 

domestic achievement was the dismantling 

of the unspoken, but crippling, 

compact between state ownership and 

monopoly trade unionism. Almost as 

crucial was the recovery of control over 

the public finances and the key switch 

of Britain’s tax structure away from on 

“ The one sadness is that Michael 

Heseltine might have done better still ” 

Margeret Thatcher 

and Foreign 

Secretary Geoffrey 

cross the tarmac at 

Heathrow on the 

way to the Stuttgart 

Summit in 1983. 

Press Secretary 

Bernard Ingham 

and Cabinet 

Secretary Robin 

Butler look on. 

which positively obstructed enterprise. 

The real triumph was to have 

transformed not just one party but 

two - so that when Labour did finally 

return, these changes were accepted 

as irreversible. The irony is that 

Thatcherism might never have survived 

at all, had it not been for John 

Major’s success in consolidating it. 

The one sadness is that Michael 

Heseltine might have done better 

still, by securing as well the 

European role for Britain, which Ted 

Heath had made possible.

Hilda’s 

cabinet 

inspired by 


Nicholas 

bandSongs 

Hillman 

Nicholas Hillman worked for David 

Willetts between 1999 and 2003. He 

has written for the Journal of 

Contemporary History, Searchlight 

and the Birmingham Post as well as 

It is often assumed that pop 

music was depoliticised in 

the 1980s. The theory goes 

that once punk had flowed its 

full course, then politics and 

pop music disassociated themselves 

from one another. One journalist, for 

example, recently claimed that 

Ghost Town, the 1981 Number 1 single 

by The Specials - a ska band who 

emerged out of punk - marked the 

final moment when popular culture 

and politics came together ‘as one’. 

But, while some of the general 

political heat might have dissipated 

out of the music scene during the 

1980s, there was one subject that 

could still tempt even the most indolent 

songwriters to put pen to paper: 

Margaret Thatcher. 

Many of the songs inspired by 

Mrs Thatcher and her breed of 

Conservatism are undeniably puerile 

and naïve and some are also remarkably 

unmemorable. The chance of 

them having any measurable impact 

on British politics was always going 

to be remote. But Conservative supporters 

nonetheless have to recog- 

a number of think-tanks. Here he 

analyzes the impact Margaret 

Thatcher’s personality and political 

achievements had on the pop songs 

of the period. 

nise that the devil does have all the 

best tunes. 

Stand Down Margaret 

It is not particularly easy to categorise 

the songs for which Margaret 

Thatcher was the primary target. But 

one recurring theme was a simple 

desire to see her leave office. 

The Beat’s Stand Down Margaret, 

which reached Number 22 in the 

charts in 1980, is an early example. 

Simply Red expressed the same sen- 

“ It is not particularly easy to 

categorise the songs for which Margaret 

Thatcher was the primary target. But 

one recurring theme was a simple 

desire to see her leave office ” 

timent in their song She’ll Have to 

Go from the 1989 album A New 

Flame. The avowedly political - and 

now Blairite - lead singer, Mick 

Hucknall sang in the chorus: 

‘Breaking our backs with slurs, And 

taking our tax for murdering, The 

only thing I know, She’ll have to 

go’. 

Not surprisingly, given the title, 

many of the songs on She Was Only 

a Grocer’s Daughter, the second 

album by The Blow Monkeys, were 

inspired by Thatcherism. One of the 

singles from the album, the luxuriant 

(Celebrate) The Day After You 

focussed on the time when Mrs 

Thatcher would no longer be Prime 

Minister. The song was only in the 

charts for two weeks and peaked at 

Number 52 - forty-seven places 

lower than an earlier politicallymotivated 

single from the same 

album. This relative failure appears 

to have been partly due to the concerns 

of broadcasters, such as the 

BBC, who were reluctant to play 

such an explicitly political song in 

the run-up to the 1987 General 

Election. 

Margaret on the Guillotine 

For other artists, it was not enough 

simply to wish Mrs Thatcher out of 

office. Elvis Costello, who would 

sometimes play Stand Down 

Margaret in his sets, expressed even 

harsher sentiments in Tramp the Dirt 

Down on his 1989 album Spike. The 

song begins with an image of Mrs 

Thatcher kissing a crying child in a 

hospital and continues with Costello 

hoping that he will live long enough 

to taunt the Prime Minister even 

after her death. When playing the 

song live in later years, Costello 

sometimes introduced it with a 

quick burst of Ding Dong the Witch 

is Dead from The Wizard of Oz and 

added a verse about John Major. 

Margaret on the Guillotine was 

included as the final track on Viva 

Hate, the first solo album by 

Morrissey, previously lead singer of 

The Smiths. The song had originally 

been intended as the title track of 

what became the seminal 1986 

album The Queen is Dead and, when 

it finally saw the light of day in 

1988, Morrissey was interviewed by 

the police because the lyrics were 

regarded as menacing. While the 

music for Margaret on the 


Hilda’s cabinet band 

Guillotine lacks the power of many 

of Morrissey’s other songs, the 

lyrics contain an unmistakeably vitriolic 

anger. The same is true of the 

only chart entry by the band 

“ No assessment of modern British 

political song-writing is complete without 

some mention of Billy Bragg ” 

S*M*A*S*H. Their 1994 single I 

Want to Kill Somebody, which 

reached Number 26, is also notable 

for finding something to rhyme with 

Virginia Bottomley and for the 

band’s incomplete grasp of spelling 

and grammar: ‘Whoever’s in power, 

I’ll be the opposition, I want to kill 

somebody, Margaret thatcher, 

Jefferey archer, Michael heseltine, 

John Major, Virginia Bottomeley 

especially’ (sic). 

Shipbuilding 

Another theme popular among 

musicians opposed to Thatcher was 

the Falklands War. Elvis Costello 

wrote the lyrics to Shipbuilding for 

Below: Stephen 

Patrick Morrissey. 

in his album Viva 

Hate, the former 

Smiths frontman 

wanted to see 

‘Margaret on the 

Guillotine’. 


Robert Wyatt, formerly of Soft 

Machine, after reading about the war 

in the Australian press, and the song 

was a minor hit in 1983. Less direct 

than many anti-Thatcher tracks, the 

song cleverly contrasts the additional 

employment from new shipbuilding 

with the use of the ships in war - 

the words lament that ‘Within weeks 

they’ll be re-opening the shipyard, 

And notifying the next of kin once 

again, It’s all we’re skilled in, We 

will be shipbuilding’. The song is 

perhaps the most enduring and influential 

of all anti-Thatcher songs; it 

was also recorded by Costello himself, 

Tasmin Archer, who issued it as 

a single in the first half of the 1990s, 

and Suede. 

Other songs that refer to the 

Falklands conflict range from the 

ironic Happy Days by The Shamen, 

to the strange War by The Rugburns: 

‘The Falklands was cool but it was 

too damn short, I want a real war 

cause I built a bitchin fort’. The dour 

Mentioned in Dispatches by 

Television Personalities and the 

Faith Brothers’ Easter Parade were 

more direct in their criticism. The 

latter tells of a 19 year old who is 

injured in battle: ‘My mind 

ingrained, I came home maimed, So 

was kept away from the Easter 

Parade. … The mother of the nation 

cries “Rejoice”, And I can hardly 

shuffle, Struck down for what the 

mean can do for political ambition’. 

Mother knows best 

No assessment of modern British 

political song-writing is complete 

without some mention of Billy 

Bragg. Along with Paul Weller of 

The Style Council, he led the 

Labour-supporting Red Wedge in 

the mid-1980s and his songs cover 

topics as diverse as the recent Iraq 

war (The Price of Oil), the inter-war 

slump (Between the Wars) and rightwing 

newspapers (It Says Here); in 

1990, his manager, Peter Jenner, was 

reported to have said, ‘If you have a 

good, right on cause, don’t ask Billy 

to play a benefit for it because you’ll 

lose.’ Bragg’s song Thatcherites lays 

wide-ranging criticism on top of the 

tune to a much earlier political song 

Ye Jacobites By Name: ‘You privatise 

away what is ours, what is ours, 

You privatise away what is ours, You 

privatise away and then you make us

pay, We’ll take it back someday, 

mark my words, mark my words, 

We’ll take it back some day mark my 

words’. 

Other prominent folk singers also 

produced broad critiques of 

Thatcherism. Lal Waterson’s Hilda’s 

Cabinet Band is perhaps the cleverest 

anti-Thatcher song of all. The 

Cabinet is portrayed as a band who 

are leading a dance and the lyrics 

invert the traditional instructions of 

band leaders. Recalling ‘the lady’s 

not for turning’, the song starts with 

‘the one where you never turn 

around’ and continues with the command 

to ‘Put your right boot in, put 

it in again, Poll tax your girl in the 

middle of the ring, Privatise your 

partner, do it on your own, Kick the 

smallest one among you, promenade 

home’. 

Richard Thompson, originally of 

Fairport Convention, played at one 

time with Lal Waterson’s band, The 

Watersons, and he penned his own 

anti-Thatcher song, Mother Knows 

Best. Lyrically, it, too, is a step 

above many other comparable songs. 

But it seeks to challenge 

Thatcherism head-on at its strongest 

point - the championing of freedom 

and the retreat of the nanny state - 

and many of the lyrics are ultimately 

unpersuasive: ‘So you think you 

know how to wipe your nose, So you 

think you know how to button your 

clothes, You don’t know shit, If you 

hadn’t already guessed, You’re just a 

bump on the log of life, Cos mother 

knows best’. 

God Save the Queen 

Some Conservatives would no doubt 

consider many of the songs targeted 

at Mrs Thatcher to be highly offensive, 

but she was not too concerned 

about them. When, in the run-up to 

the 1987 General Election, Mrs 

Thatcher was asked by Smash Hits, 

the leading pop music magazine of 

the day, what she thought of leftwing 

pop stars ‘who can’t wait to get 

you out of Number 10’, she replied: 

‘Can’t they? Ha ha ha! … most 

young people rebel and then gradually 

become more realistic. It’s very 

much part of life, really. And when 

they want to get Mrs Thatcher out of 

Number 10 - I’ve usually not met 

most of them. … it’s nice they know 

your name.’ 

Besides, Mrs Thatcher is in very 

good company. The Queen is also 

“ Some Conservatives would no 

doubt consider many of the songs 

targeted at Mrs Thatcher to be highly 

offensive, but she was not too 

concerned about them ” 

the target of a number of powerful 

songs, such as God Save the Queen 

by The Sex Pistols and the aforementioned 

The Queen is Dead, as 

well as Elizabeth My Dear, a 59-second 

pastiche of Scarborough Fair on 

The Stone Roses’ debut album (‘My 

aim is true, my purpose is clear, It’s 

curtains for you Elizabeth my dear’). 

If anything, these songs are more 

effective than those targeted at Mrs 

Thatcher, yet they have done next to 

nothing to popularise republicanism. 

Tony Blair is also the subject of 

some critical songs, despite New 

Labour’s promotion of Cool 

Britannia. In You and Whose Army, 

Radiohead challenge the Prime 

“ Tony Blair is also the subject of some 

critical songs, despite New Labour’s 

promotion of Cool Britannia. In You and 

Whose Army, Radiohead challenge the 

Prime Minister to a fight ” 

Minister to a fight. And in the much 

cleverer Cocaine Socialism, Pulp’s 

lead singer Jarvis Cocker derides the 

Labour Party for the desperate 

nature of their campaign to win support 

from celebrities. His mother, 

who - like Madonna’s mother-in-law 

- is a Conservative activist, unsurprisingly 

approved of the song. 

Girl Power 

Moreover, the pop music scene as a 

Hilda’s cabinet band 

whole is somewhat less antagonistic 

to Thatcherism than this review 

might suggest. The influential 

Happy Mondays are supposed to 

have said that Mrs Thatcher was 

‘alright. She’s a heavy dude.’ Prior 

to the 1997 General Election, two of 

the five members of the most successful 

band of the day, The Spice 

Girls, spoke highly of Mrs Thatcher 

in an interview in The Spectator. 

Geri Halliwell, aka Ginger Spice, 

said, ‘We Spice Girls are true 

Thatcherites. Thatcher was the first 

Spice Girl, the pioneer of our ideology 

- Girl Power.’ 

Ten years earlier, Smash Hits had 

asked a number of pop stars which 

way they intended to vote in the 

forthcoming General Election. Only 

one said he would be voting 

Conservative - Gary Numan bravely 

confirmed his support for Mrs 

Thatcher, even though it had already 

seriously damaged his credibility 

among the music press. But the article 

also showed that, even if the vast 

majority of 1980s pop stars were not 

inclined towards Thatcherism, they 

were not overwhelmingly supportive 

of the Labour Party either. Despite 

the supposed credibility of initiatives 

such as Red Wedge, fewer than 

half of the 14 stars interviewed said 

they would definitely vote Labour 

and most of the six that did were 

already known to be outspoken on 

political issues. The article even 

pours doubt on the claim that is 

often made by journalists that 

George Michael was a ‘lifelong 

Labour voter until 2001’ for he told 

the magazine ‘I’ll probably vote for 

the SDP/Liberal Alliance’. 

Most significantly of all, the various 

anti-Thatcher songs are not the 

only evidence that pop music continued 

to reflect political culture 

during the 1980s. It is sometimes 

forgotten that many of the most successful 

bands of the decade, such as 

Duran Duran with their slick videos 

and ostentatious wealth, summed up 

the economic boom just as effectively 

as the protest songs encapsulated 

the more negative aspects of 

Thatcherism. 


A strangely familiar voice 


There is nothing like hearing 

speeches by a politician to bring 

back memories and to evolve 

comparisons with the present 

day. Helen Szamuely, co-editor 

of the Conservative History 

Journal listens to the 3 CDs produced 

by Politico's of Margaret 

Thatcher's great speeches. 

Not long ago I was 

telling a young 

American, who 

works at one of the 

many think-tanks in 

Washington DC, that there was 

something about Margaret 

Thatcher that made all the men 

who had worked with her or just 

met her go weak at the knees. 

"Well," - he said rather sheepishly, 

- "funny you should say that. I 

met her at a dinner last week and 

thought she was amazing." Not 

for the first time I wondered how 

the Lady managed to captivate 

every male that came into her 

orbit. Listening to the speeches 

systematically I began to understand 

a little. 

Two of the CDs chart 

Thatcher's career from the first 

interview for ITN, given immediately 

after her maiden speech 

in February 1960. She sounds 

hesitant and rather prissy. Her 

slightly high, girlish gush 

would have been enough to 

irritate anyone. By the time of 

the second interview on her 

first day as Parliamentary 

Secretary to the Ministry of 

Pensions, in October 1961, the 

gushing is less obvious, but 

there is still that high-pitched 

tone, that girlish breathlessness. 

Both disappear very 

quickly as Margaret Thatcher 

rises to become a force in the 

Conservative Party. 

We plunge into a rapid trip 

through the years that came to be 

dominated by this extraordinary 

political figure: her tussles with 

the teachers' unions, her election 

as leader of the party, that fateful 

election of 1979; and the years 

of the premiership: the fights 

with the unions and with inflation, 

with the Labour Party and 

her own so-called supporters, the 

fraught and finally glorious days 

of the Falklands War, the fight 

against the Communist enemy 

and its sympathizers at home; 

the lows of her political career: 

the Westland affair, the terrible 

Brighton bomb and, finally, the 

last struggle over Europe and the 

defeat at the hands of her own 

party. There are other speeches 

of her political life after 

November 22, 1990 but it is all a 

sad coda to a glittering career. 

The third CD (a bonus, as it is 

described by the publisher) gives 

full versions of a couple of 

speeches, a specially produced 

sketch from Yes Prime Minister, 

in which Thatcher demands the 

abolition of economists on the 

grounds that they just fill politicians' 

heads with ridiculous 

notions, and a couple of other 

curios. 

Listening to the speeches one is 

reminded of all the famous 

occasions and phrases: the 

Iron Lady of the Western 

World, the Lady is not 

for turning, the 

famous No! No! No! 

to the back door 

socialism of Delors's 

plans, the Labour 

Chancellor being 


"frit" and many others. But there 

is something else there. Well, two 

other things, to be precise. 

One is Thatcher's ability to 

adapt her speech to whatever 

goes on in the audience, whether 

it is friendly laughter or 

unfriendly heckling. As time 

went on she got better at it, as 

did many politicians of the older 

generation. She was, perhaps, 

better than most in the way she 

almost flirted with her audience, 

with the journalists, the cameramen. 

I cannot help remembering 

Thatcher's visit to the then 

Soviet Union and the long TV 

inteview she gave. Facing 

numerous journalists she 

answered them firmly and 

severely but with just a hint of 

flirtatiousness, finding the questions 

they thought very daring, 

extremely easy to handle. By the 

end of the hour she had them eating 

out of her hand. The rest of 

the country was swooning as 

well. When I went to Moscow a 

few weeks after her visit, I heard 

nothing but 

accounts of 

Thatcher's clothes, Thatcher's 

interview, what Thatcher said 

and where Thatcher went. 

There is something else in 

those speeches: the constant 

theme of liberty and patriotism. 

Somehow, one forgets how often 

she spoke passionately of freedom 

and its importance for 

everyone, whether in Britain or 

other countries. Listening 

through the speeches, one after 

another, I was struck by the fact 

that she had, with some deviation 

and hesitation in her actions, 

kept faith with that early 

announcement that what she 

believed in was liberty. 

A few weeks ago I saw Lady 

Thatcher in the House of Lords. 

She came out of the Chamber 

and went through Peers' Lobby 

chatting to somebody. I am a 

strong, though not uncritical 

admirer of the Lady, but I was 

amazed to see that every head 

turned to watch her go. "What do 

you expect?" - said my companion. 

- "There has been no other 

politician since her time." 

Margaret Thatcher - The Great 

Speeches, 3 CDs, £19.99, 

published by Politico’s 

Media and available from 

www.politicos.co.uk

The political demise of 

Neville 

Chamberlain 

Harshan Kumarasingham 

Harshan Kumarasingham is a PhD 

student in Political History at 

Victoria University of Wellington, 

New Zealand. He has recently competed 

an MA thesis, entitled "For the 

Good of the Party - An Analysis of the 

Fall of British Conservative Party 

Leaders from Chamberlain to 

Thatcher". Here he looks at the 

events that led to the end of Neville 

Chamberlain's government and political 

career in 1940. 

Chamberlain 

boards an aircraft 

bound for Munich 

to have talks with 

Adolf Hitler, over 

the future of the 

disputed Czech 

Sudetenland, 1938. 

As the Prime Minister 

drove through the hallowed 

avenue to 

Buckingham Palace he 

was rapturously welcomed 

by streets 'lined from one end 

to the other with people of every class, 

shouting themselves hoarse, leaping 

on the running board, banging on the 

windows, and thrusting their hands 

into the car to be shaken'. ’ The reader 

would be forgiven to believe that 

these were the words describing 

Winston Churchill at the end of the 

Second World War about to present 

himself to the exuberant multitudes 

that awaited him to celebrate victory 

in Europe in May 1945. In fact these 

were the words depicting Neville 

Chamberlain as he returned from 

Munich, infamously, with that little 

piece of paper that he assumed triumphantly, 

and in the end tragically, 

would mean 'peace in our time' 

The sixty-eight year old 

Chamberlain had been the "natural 

choice" to succeed the lethargic 

Stanley Baldwin and become Prime 

Minister and leader in 1937, his leadership 

seconded by no less a person 

than Winston Churchill. The second 

son of the great Joseph Chamberlain 

had a keen administrative talent that 

had been proven through his effective 

tenure at the Health Ministry and his 

financial acumen had enabled him to 

show a steady and businesslike competence 

when at the Exchequer during 

the Great Depression era. 

Yet for all his domestic competence, 

his years of patient and prudent 

financial and social policy, his reliable 

Conservative statecraft, it is one policy 

that is forever entwined with his 

name - appeasement. This would initially 

earn the applause of 

Conservatives but would eventually 

compel them to assent to 

Chamberlain's dramatic dethronement 

in 1940. 

History (and perhaps Winston 

Churchill) has often glorified 

Chamberlain's downfall as an event 

that corrected past mistakes and injustices. 

However, Chamberlain, just 

months before his resignation, was 

recording some of the highest 


Neville Chamberlain 

approval ratings in British political 

history and seemed to have silenced 

any opposition to his leadership. This 

enigmatic figure's leadership is too 

easily discarded by populist historical 

misunderstanding. 

Chamberlain had returned triumphant 

from Munich, as the saviour 

of peace, greeted by relieved and 

delirious crowds the size of which 

were not seen again till VE day. The 

pact vindicated appeasement and 

sealed the ascendance of Chamberlain 

over his detractors. The only isolated 

casualty was the meek resignation of 

Alfred Duff Cooper, who had no wish 

to bring down the Government. The 

majority shared the concerted sense of 

alleviation that war had been forestalled, 

which proved intoxicating for 

Chamberlain and his followers. 

Chamberlain had staked much on 

Munich as a populist method to contain 

his enemies at home as well as 

abroad. In the Cabinet the Prime 

Minister could rely upon Sir Samuel 

Hoare, Sir John Simon and Lord 

Halifax. These three most senior ministers, 

especially Hoare and Simon, 

would act as loyal Chamberlainites 

who buttressed and guarded their 

leader and with whom Chamberlain 

could compel the Cabinet towards his 

objectives. Subsequently, with their 

power entwined with Chamberlain's 

they would also share their leader's 

fate and for ever lose their centrality to 

power - Simon relegated to the wilderness 

of the Woolsack while Hoare and 

Halifax were effectively exiled as 

emissaries to Madrid and Washington 

respectively. 

But in 1938 their power was substantial 

and Munich had, albeit fleetingly, 

strengthened their hold on the 

reins. With the chorus of support for 

the Prime Minister, Conservative 

Central Office urged Chamberlain to 

dissolve Parliament and secure an 

increased majority under his leadership 

that was predicated to be on the 

scale of victories in 1931 and 1935. 2 

Indeed, when the Prime Minister 

entered the Commons for the Munich 

debate the entire Government benches 

rose in ovation for Chamberlain with 

five notable exceptions that included 


Duncan Sandys, Harold Nicolson and 

Churchill. 

The anti-appeasers, at this point, 

were more like a debating society and 

lacked cohesion and unity. 

Chamberlain, believing in his infallibility, 

was able with his popularity to 

deflate their most prominent member, 

the 'alarmist' Churchill. The normally 

stoic Prime Minister, to the lustrous 

amusement of the Treasury benches, 

mockingly exclaimed 'If I were asked 

whether judgement is the first of my 

Rt Hon. Friend's many admirable 

qualities I should ask the House of 

Commons not to press the point'. 3 

The threat to other potential rebel 

members was de-selection and a snap 

election on an issue that the majority 

of the public and Party supported. 

Rebel MPs faced reprimand not only 

from the Whips but, dispiritingly, from 

their own constituencies. In the 

Munich debate, with a majority of 

over two hundred, the abstention of 

twenty-two Conservatives was softly 

recorded. Writing to his sister, 

Chamberlain admitted the debate had 

been 'trying' and that he 'tried occasionally 

to take an antidote to the poison 

gas by reading a few of the countless 

letters & telegrams which continued 

to pour in expressing in moving 

accents the writer's heartfelt relief & 

gratitude. All the world seemed to full 

of my praises except the House of 

Commons'. 4 This exception would 

prove fatal. 

Chamberlain, taking the praise and 

plaudits from Britain and across the 

world began to believe himself above 

the petty frays of the Commons. He 

feared the Germans but not domestic 

opposition. His ascendancy in 

Cabinet was almost absolute. 

Chamberlain craftily exercised his 

power to ensure his policies were 

implemented. Using advisors, like 

the more recent occupants of 

Downing St, he created separate 

channels of information and implementation, 

such as Sir Horace Wilson 

who would work over the heads of 

Halifax's Foreign Office. 

Responding to Simon's demands for a 

Committee of Control to examine 

defence expenditure Chamberlain 

made sure no ministers with defence 

portfolios sat on it 

Chamberlain's supremacy could last 

only as long as his personally stamped 

appeasement policy continued to 

deliver peace and the status quo. The 

Nazi occupation of Prague in March 

1939 provided a sharp jolt to 

Chamberlain and eroded his credibility. 

Recording in his diary Harold 

Nicolson wrote, 'the feeling in the lobbies 

is that Chamberlain will either 

have to go or completely reverse his 

policy. Unless in his speech tonight 

[in Birmingham] he admits that he 

was wrong, they feel that resignation 

is the only alternative…The 

Opposition refuse absolutely to serve 

under him. The idea is that Halifax 

should become Prime Minister and 

Eden Leader of the House'. 5 

Six months earlier Chamberlain had 

been able to pursue his appeasement 

policy almost without hindrance. 

Now he was forced to make a public 

turnaround if he wished to carry on. 

At Birmingham, Chamberlain came 

out of his appeasement hypnosis by 

publicly stating that Britain would 

resist further Nazi territorial aggrandisement. 

The concession that Hitler 

had made a grave mistake and that the 

old negotiations could not continue 

appeased some of the old detractors 

and figures that had invested political 

capital in Chamberlain's appeasement 

policy. However, the very real contravention 

of Munich by Germany had 

already struck a cogent blow to his 

domestic and Party standing adding to 

his assailants fuel. 

Yet Chamberlain was certainly not 

about to hand over the premiership. 

The Prime Minister was in fact 

answering many of his critics' 

demands on issues like rearmament, 

the creation of a ministry of supply 

and guarantees to European nations. 

Though these retractions somewhat 

belatedly mitigated his long-term critics 

like Churchill and Eden, it still 

amounted to a messy reversal of his 

policy as the Prime Minister now hurriedly 

mimicked his opponents' policies 

that he had previously caustically 

dismissed. This did not stop the Prime 

Minister from allowing Sir Joseph

Ball, Director of the Conservative 

Research Department, using friends in 

MI5 for wire-tapping the private telephone 

conversations of Churchill, 

Eden and their allies to check rumours 

of a 'palace coup' and whether they 

could be quietened with the ‘prospect 

of office’. 6 

The August Non-Aggression Pact 

between Germany and the Soviet 

Union, and the invasion of Poland 

compelled serious reactions from 

Chamberlain that he would have 

scoffed at a few months previously. 

War spelled the clear failure of the 

Government's and therefore scuttled 

Chamberlain's existing policies. The 

reputations of the inner circle, especially 

Hoare and Simon, never recovered 

from this clear indictment that the 

outbreak of War brought. 

Chamberlain was now compelled to 

invite Churchill into the War Cabinet 

while Eden became Dominions 

Secretary. 

Yet Chamberlain, still hanging on 

for control, only dropped two ministers, 

and made minimal changes with 

twenty-four of the thirty one ministers 

from peacetime keeping their posts. 7 

These infinitesimal changes did little 

to rejuvenate Chamberlain's power, 

nor did it endear his reputation to the 

nation at a time of international crisis. 

The inclusion of Churchill and Eden 

meant there were two key ministers 

that did not owe their allegiance to 

him. Dangerously for Chamberlain, 

both, especially Churchill, were figures 

seen as viable alternative Prime 

Ministers. 

Churchill, rather than continue to be 

parodied as a troublemaker and adversary 

of the government worked strongly 

in its defence. The new First Lord 

of the Admiralty, far from attacking 

his former critics, enhanced his position 

cleverly by praising his old 

detractors, and thereby raised his credibility. 

Now Churchill far from being 

perceived as extreme, established himself 

as a statesman and thus challenged 

the Prime Minister and contributed 

to the atrophy of the 

Chamberlain's leadership. 

Chamberlain, writing (rather convolutedly) 

to his sister in January 

1940, said that 'I don't see that other to 

whom I could hand over with any confidence 

that he would do other than I'. 8 

These were not the words of someone 

who intended to retire despite the 

repudiation of the central plank of his 

very personal foreign policy. By 

emphasising, as many Conservative 

leaders had before and since, the inadvisability 

and paucity of worthy successors 

Chamberlain sought the continuance 

of his leadership and premiership. 

During the period of the 

'Phoney War' Chamberlain, despite 

meeting quarters of dissent in the 

Commons, could still appeal to a 

nation that did not want full-scale war. 

Some opinion polls even as late as 

April 1940 still indicated key support 

for Chamberlain at a level close to 

sixty per cent. 9 

The calamity of the Norwegian 

campaign and the German onslaught 

into Western Europe would draw the 

curtain of Chamberlain's infallibility 

down theatrically. The spectre of a 

positive and effective, though still precarious, 

campaign convinced 

Chamberlain of the need of Norway to 

demonstrate his capability of being the 

leader who could bring victory not 

vacillation. Chamberlain perhaps also 

had an eye across the Channel where 

the tenacious Churchill-like figure, 

Reynaud had usurped his fellow 

Munich signatory Daladier, as Prime 

Minister of France. 

The consequent failure of Norway, 

rearmament deficiencies, and the lacklustre 

conduct of war enabled the various 

opposition groups an opportunity 

to apply real pressure on Chamberlain 

during the debates scheduled for 7-8 

May. Clement Davies, a future Liberal 

leader, headed the All-Party Action 

Group, which contained "progressive" 

Tory MPs and Centre-Left MPs that 

had shown little loyalty to Chamberlain 

and were presumed averse to his continuity. 

The Eden Group, containing figures 

like Amery, had shown antipathy 

towards Chamberlain's policy but had 

loyalty to the Party. There was also 

Lord Salisbury's 'Watching 

Committee', which contained upcoming 

Conservatives like Macmillan as 

well as being filled with Tory heavy- 


weights. The group, though not wanting 

to bring down the Government or 

Chamberlain, was at the very least discomforted 

by Chamberlain's policy 

and poor direction. All these groups 

had oscillated between stances that 

wanted to reform the ançien regime 

with the disposal of Simon and Hoare 

but keep Chamberlain, to demanding 

the complete radical reformation of the 

government to include all parties. 

Norway now united the groups and 

gave the cohesion that was lacking 

before regarding Chamberlain's position 

that would soon dramatically crystallise. 

Chamberlain began the debate on 

Norway in less than convincing style 

and interestingly stated, alluding perhaps 

to Churchill's disaster in the 

Great War, that Norway was 'not comparable 

to the withdrawal from 

Gallipoli'. The infamous onslaught in 

May is perhaps best remembered for 

Leo Amery's historic and venomous 

diatribe against Chamberlain and the 

Chamberlainites. Amery talked of the 

present Cabinet being filled with 

'peace-time statesmen who are not too 

well fitted for the conduct of war'… 

'This is what Cromwell said to the 

Long Parliament when he thought it 

was no longer fit to conduct the affairs 

of the nation: "You have sat too long 

for any good you have been doing. 

Depart, I say, and let us have done 

with you. In the name of God, go!"' 

Figures on the Opposition like 

Herbert Morrison and Chamberlain's 

old adversary Lloyd George, sensing 

blood, roused the ready passions of 

the Commons, which fast turned into 

an internecine chamber of obloquy. 

Chamberlain jolted by this, responded 

to the open attacks from Tories and 

others by stating with embattled fervour 

that 'I do not seek to evade criticism, 

but I can say this to my friends 

in the House - and I have friends in the 

House. No Government can prosecute 

a war efficiently unless it has 

public and Parliamentary support. I 

accept the challenge. I welcome it 

indeed. At least we shall see who is 

with us and who is against us, and I 

call upon my friends to support us in 

the Lobby tonight'. 



Lloyd George seized upon 

these exasperated and ill chosen 

words that erroneously called for 

'friends' at a time when everyone 

else was talking of unity and 

nation building. The mercurial 

old Welsh orator capitalised on 

this by asking Churchill not be an 

'air raid shelter' for Chamberlain 

and then vehemently launched a 

forceful attack on Chamberlain - 

'He is not in a position to appeal 

on the grounds of friendship. He 

has appealed for sacrifice. The 

nation is prepared for every sacrifice 

so long as it has leadership…I 

say solemnly that the 

Prime Minister should give an 

example of sacrifice, because 

there is nothing which can contribute 

more to victory in this war 

than that he should sacrifice the 

seals of office.' 10 

The ensuing vote saw detractors 

openly herald the fall of 

Chamberlain and gave confidence 

to Conservatives, who normally 

feared the wrath of the 

Whips, to vote against their own 

Government. Not for the last 

time Parliament would be instrumental 

in bringing down a Tory 

leader. According to Jörgen 

Rasmussen, Chamberlain, like 

many of his successors, had 

showed a 'persistent refusal to 

heed constructive criticism' 

which did 'frustrate even staunch 

supporters' who 'in 

despair…were driven to vote 

against their leaders'. 11 

The ineffectual war leadership 

and direction, distaste of continuing 

prevarication, lingering 

stench of appeasement, the 

Government's defeatism, and 

years of adversarial politics rendered 

the demanded coalition 

government under a Chamberlain 

banner implausible, and thus 

struck against the possibility of 

Conservative hegemony. The 

Government, who could normally 

count on a majority of around two 

hundred twenty, now humiliatingly 

collapsed to eighty-one. Fortytwo 

Government MPs voted with 

the Opposition while eighty-eight 

abstained. Labour MPs and the 

likes of Harold Macmillan sang 

'Rule Britannia' and chants of 

'Go, go, go' resounded in the 

Chamber as Chamberlain, stiff 

and inflamed, walked silently 

from this infamous gladiatorial 

spectacle. 

As evidence of his impotence 

Chamberlain even tried to offer 

high office to Tory rebels like 

Amery with the Treasury or 

Foreign Office. Coalition government 

was essential for survival. 

Not only were the public 

and the House demanding it, but 

also any government would need 

the support of Labour and their 

Trade Union links to mobilise 

fully the workforce for the unique 

requirements of war. With the 

distinct and real animus between 

Chamberlain and Labour the 

chances were at best remote. 

In an interview at 10.15, the 

morning after the momentous 

debate, Chamberlain discussed 

with the Foreign Secretary, the 

possibility of him taking over. 

Though his reluctance and peerage 

usually discount the possibility 

of Halifax's succession - the 

details are not as neat. Andrew 

Roberts argues that 'Halifax simply 

calculated that he would be in 

a more powerful position standing 

behind the throne than sitting 

on it' and still be 'heir-apparent' 

and as Halifax himself stated in 

that inimitable patrician, High 

Tory nonchalant way, 'he felt he 

could do the job'. 12 

Perhaps Halifax not only wanted 

to restrain the excesses of 

Churchill, but step in at a later 

date - but at this point he had no 

wish to emulate Asquith in the 

previous war (with Lloyd George 

making all the noise and finally 

usurping him from the premiership). 

Halifax finally abnegated 

from taking the mighty responsibility 

and told Chamberlain to 

advise the King to send for 

Churchill. In the evening the 

weary Prime Minister met with 


Labour leaders who only delayed 

their inevitable negative response 

to coalition under him by their 

requirement to defer the choice to 

their National Executive. 

Early next morning 

Chamberlain was awoken with 

the news that the Low Countries 

had been struck by Blitzkrieg. 

Chamberlain thought that this 

may not be the time to change the 

old guard, but in the Cabinet only 

Hoare defended this position, 

while his ally Sir Kingsley Wood 

advised the Prime Minister to 

step down and was supported by 

no less than Halifax. 13 Later a 

call came through from 

Bournemouth from Labour confirming 

that its politicians could 

not serve under him, which finally 

destroyed any illusion of 

Chamberlain continuing. A 

dispirited Chamberlain immediately 

proceeded to hand over the 

seals of office to a saddened King 

who soon formally ushered in the 

contrasting Churchill era. 

Importantly, Chamberlain 

retained the leadership of the 

Conservative Party and stayed in 

the five-member War Cabinet as 

Lord President. Chamberlain 

played a key role in the administration 

of the war and worked 

well with Churchill in whose 

absence he chaired meetings until 

his terminal cancer made resignation 

unavoidable in October. He 

died only a month later. Yet any 

power that he retained was due to 

Churchill, and not the 

Conservatives who had ruthlessly 

allowed the downfall of their 

leader who could not give the 

nation or the Conservatives the 

leadership required with war after 

being emblazoned by the failure 

of appeasement. 

Chamberlain's leadership of 

the Party was now largely nominal 

since its efficacy had plummeted 

as so many of the 

Parliamentary Party had deserted 

their leader's direction at such a 

crucial time. On paper his powers 

as Conservative leader appear 

impressive but the fact remained 

that a decisive minority had lost 

confidence in him. Chamberlain's 

career ended in ignominy and 

tragedy. 

As Chamberlain tragically 

recognised - 'Only a few months 

ago I was Prime Minister in the 

fullest enjoyment of mental and 

physical health and with what was 

described as an unprecedented 

hold on the H[ouse] of 

C[ommons]. Then came the 

Norwegian withdrawal, the panicky 

resentful vote which brought 

down the majority in such spectacular 

fashion, my instant realisation 

that the loss of prestige could only 

be countered by a gesture of 

increased unity here and that unity 

could not be achieved by me in the 

face of Labour and Liberal opposition 

to myself'. 14 The 

Conservatives sacrificed 

Chamberlain for not being able to 

provide that unity and obtained the 

ultimate censurable price for being 

the principal prophet of appeasement 

when that policy had long 

ceased to pay political dividends 

for the Conservative Party. 

1 David Dutton, Neville Chamberlain, London: 

Arnold, 2001, p 52 

2 Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox - A 

Biography of Lord Halifax, London: 

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991, p 123 

3 John Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost 

Peace, London: Macmillan, 1991, p 153 

4 Graham Stewart, Burying Caesar- Churchill, 

Chamberlain and the Battle for the 

Conservative Party, London: Phoenix, 1999, 

p 336 

5 Ibid. pp 348-355 

6 Ibid. p 368 

7 John Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and 

Baldwin 1902-1940, London: Longman, 

1978, p 370 

8 Op. Cit. p 397 

9 Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British 

Politics and the Second World War, London: 

Cape, 1975, p 78 

10 Stewart, Burying Caesar, pp 402- 412 

11 Jörgen Rasmussen, "Party Discipline in 

War-Time: The Downfall of the Chamberlain 

Government", The Journal of Politics, Vol. 

32, 1970, p 382 

12 Roberts, The Holy Fox - A Biography of Lord 

Halifax, PP 199-201 

13 Stewart, Burying Caesar, p 419 

14 Dutton, Neville Chamberlain, pp 5-6

Capturing the 

Middle Ground 

Disraeli’s 1872 Blueprint for Electoral Success 

Mark Coalter 

‘ 

The leader of the 

Conservative Party . . . 

did not reward his followers 

by any very 

startling originality. 

Perhaps it is unfair to be always looking 

for something profound or paradoxical 

or mystical when he makes a 

popular oration, but we cannot help it; 

he has created the curiosity, and we 

are disappointed if it be not satisfied" 

The Times, 25 June 1872 

Benjamin Disraeli's speeches at the 

Free Trade Hall in Manchester and 

the Crystal Palace in 1872 have been 

discussed widely by historians and 

granted a far-reaching significance 

by a number of twentieth and twentyfirst 

century politicians. Remarkably, 

a consensus of sorts exists between 

these two diverse groups and interpretations 

have revolved around the 

dual themes of Conservative Party 

fortunes and social reform. Beyond 

dispute is that events after 1872 illustrate 

the extent to which the speeches 

constituted part of the Conservative 

revival and allowed the Party to raise 

itself from the political graveyard of 

opposition thereby setting the scene, 

in 1874, for the first Conservative 

majority administration since that of 

Peel in 1841. Such common ground, 

with the benefit of hindsight, is 

indeed well founded. Conversely, 

opinion in 1872 was slightly more 

sceptical about the significance, if 

any, of Disraeli's platform pronouncements. 

The Times, then, as 

now, was one of the key tenets of 

what might be described as the 'liberal' 

establishment and, at best, was 

lukewarm to the Tories. It claimed, in 

late 1871, that Conservative majority 

government was impossible because 

"the leaders of the Party do not 

believe in it. The country gives them 

no confidence. The majority is 

against them. All the forces of time 

are strained in an opposite direction"; 

and noted, on the eve of the 

Manchester speech, that "Mr Disraeli 

is achieving a great success by his 

visit to Lancashire. If he were the 

most potent of Ministers, instead of 

the chief of the weakest Opposition 

which Parliament has known for 

many years, he could not have been 

met with a more hearty welcome." 

Why this negative tone, one may 

ask, in commenting on one of the 

greater figures of nineteenth-century 

public life, compared with the measured 

assessment of historians? The 

answer lies in the former quotation, 

dealing with the perceived state of the 

Party by mainstream opinion, a view 

confirmed, no doubt, by the fortunes 

of the Tories since the split of 1846, 

when three short spells of minority 

Mark Coalter, currently a solicitor practising in London, is a 

regular contributor to the Conservative History Journal. 

office merely interrupted the thankless 

task of almost permanent opposition, 

and confirmed their inability to 

shape the national agenda. Compared 

with the zealous reforming spirit that 

was alive in Westminster with 

Gladstone's first administration ironing 

out ancient abuses and anomalies 

ranging from the disestablishment of 

the Church of Ireland to the introduction 

of the secret ballot and the abolition 

of the purchase of army commissions, 

the Tories' somewhat lacklustre 

opposition to these measures gave the 

impression that the Liberals were in 

control. The publication of Lothair, 

Disraeli's first novel in a generation, 

coupled with a lack of parliamentary 

activity and leadership, raised questions 

about his political commitment 

and future. Rumours of a leadership 

plot by Party grandees sponsoring the 

Earl of Derby, the son of Disraeli's 

predecessor, which in the event were 

not wholly without foundation, 

fuelled such speculation. Disraeli's 

birth, fashion and even aspects of his 

ideological outlook allowed him to be 

cast in the role of outsider, though 

with Party apparatchiks this was not 

always advantageous. When times 

were electorally lean, such attitudes 

could become hostile, particularly in 

the surroundings of Hatfield House. 

Therefore, aside from individual 

friendships, he did not benefit from 


Disraeli 

unconditional loyalty from any specific 

strand within the Party. Of course, 

his position as leader was secure when 

the Party triumphed at the polls in 

1874, but in the aftermath of electoral 

defeat in 1868 and until 1872, Disraeli 

was vulnerable. 

From 1870, however, there were 

developments occurring within the 

inner workings of the Party machine 

that bolstered the leader's position. 

With the retirement of Lord Cairns, 

Disraeli neutralised the conspirators 

in the Upper House by appointing the 

more amenable Duke of Richmond to 

lead the Tory peers in the Lords, thereby 

stifling the campaign in favour of 

Lord Salisbury. Party organisation 

was strengthened, if not professionalised, 

by the creation of Conservative 

Central Office and the National Union 

of Conservative and Constitutional 

Associations, the umbrella organisation 

for local Conservative organisations 

under the able stewardship of 

John Gorst. 

On a personal level, Disraeli 

secured a triumph by being elected 

Rector of Glasgow University in late 

1871, defeating John Ruskin. Perhaps 

the turning point in his fortunes 

occurred in February 1872 with his 

reception at St Paul's Cathedral, at a 

service of thanksgiving for the return 

to health of the Prince of Wales, when 

he was cheered by throngs of 

Londoners from the City to the 

Carlton Club. As the late Lord Blake 

put it "there occurred one of those 

seemingly inexplicable gusts of public 

opinion which now and then by some 

freak of political weather came down 

from a calm sky to ruffle the hitherto 

still political waters". Sir William 

Fraser speculated that as Disraeli sat 

in the morning-room of the Carlton 

Club, staring into the distance, rather 

than participating in a discussion on 

Napoleon, his thoughts were focused 

on a return to high office. The frosty 

and occasionally hostile reception the 

same crowd accorded Gladstone perhaps 

gave such thoughts a hint of realism 

and allowed Disraeli to develop 

them further. 

By 1872, Gladstone's administration 

was reaching that crucial midterm 

‘New Crowns for 

Old Ones’. John 

Tenniel’s Punch 

cartoon of April 

1876. 


point, when governments tend to be 

judged on their programme and 

achievements. His first term as premier 

was notable for reform, but the 

manner in which these legislative successes 

were attained and implemented 

made the government unpopular, not 

just with the special interests that they 

offended, but also the general public. 

As well as making enemies of elements 

within the Church, the House of 

Lords and, of course, the breweries - 

although not all at the same time - the 

liberal and reforming ideology that 

gave each piece of legislation its own 

interventionist and, in the eyes of the 

general public, meddling characteristics 

was proving unpalatable to the 

middle ground. 

Separate foreign crises involving 

arbitration proceedings with the US 

government, a dispute with Russia 

over the Crimean settlement, and the 

fallout from the Franco-Prussian War, 

compounded Gladstone's difficulties. 

As 1872 progressed from winter into 

spring there was a sense that with the 

Liberals running out of steam, Disraeli 

was being presented with an unprecedented 

opportunity. As Cairns put it 

memorably to Richmond, "you know 

that last year, and in 1870, he was 

down in the mouth and rather 

repelling meetings to concert plans 

etc: now he thinks things are looking 

up, and awakening himself, he turns 

round and insists that every one else is 

asleep". 

A mass Tory demonstration at 

Manchester had been discussed since 

the election defeat of 1868. However, 

the timing of such an event and the

choice of principal speaker had created 

some controversy. Lord Sandon, a 

Lancashire grandee and future cabinet 

minister, stated in 1871 that "I do not 

myself like the idea of a public appearance 

of the members of the late Cabinet 

in Lancashire . . . I do not hold a very 

high opinion of their capacity and I feel 

sure that such an appearance would tell 

against us in the country." Disraeli's 

reassertion as leader and the extent of 

Liberal unpopularity signalled that 

such a meeting was now opportune. 

Through the medium of Disraeli's 

speeches, certain key initiatives were 

launched at both the Manchester 

meeting on 3 April 1872 and that held 

at the Crystal Palace on 24 June 1872. 

As there is a certain amount of overlap 

between the contents of both speeches, 

it would be appropriate to deal with 

them collectively; firstly, by setting 

the context in which each speech was 

delivered, and secondly, assessing the 

key issues which were addressed, i.e. 

the constitution and nation, social 

reform and empire. 

The Speeches 

Disraeli's experience of mass oratory 

was certainly limited, compared to that 

of Gladstone. He had, of course, dabbled, 

but gained no reputation for 

speaking outside the familiar environs 

of House of Commons and constituency, 

although in mid-Victorian public 

life this was not such a handicap. As 

he said at Manchester, "I have never in 

the course of my life obtruded myself 

upon any meeting of my fellow-countrymen 

unless I was locally connected 

with them, or there were peculiar circumstances 

which might vindicate me 

from the imputation of thrusting 

myself unnecessarily on their attention." 

In spite of being a 'novice' he 

managed to speak for three and quarter 

hours to an audience in excess of 

30,000 delegates, though his delivery 

began to fade as he approached the 

end of his discourse. We can, of 

course, only speculate as to the extent 

to which Disraeli's consumption of 

"two bottles of white brandy, indistinguishable 

by onlookers from the water 

taken with it" affected the final hour of 

his speech. 

At the Crystal Palace he spoke to a 

much smaller audience of 2,000 delegates, 

after a banquet held at the 

National Union Conference. This 

speech built on the key messages 

announced at Manchester, particularly 

social reform and empire. It should be 

noted that whilst Disraeli did not participate 

in the art of mass oratory 

often, when he did, he was not just 

addressing the delegates in the hall, 

but more significantly, utilising the 

platform as a forum to reach a national 

audience. 

The Manchester speech had been 

much hyped in the press and political 

circles in advance, and The Times 

noted that, "we should be glad to 

hear something like a statement of 

principle," but sounded a warning 

note to the effect that "if it be clear 

that this programme will consist of 

nothing else than the appropriation 

of the chief ideas of those very radicals 

[i.e. the Liberal government], 

then the enthusiasm which today 

calls forth will very soon pass away 

even among Lancashire 

Orangemen". 

The Constitution and 

the Nation 

Disraeli initially concentrated on core 

Tory beliefs, using the speeches as a 

means of restating basic Conservative 

principles. There was a reaffirmation 

of allegiance to Crown, established 

church and House of Lords. The message 

was indeed timely, as this triumvirate 

of institutions had been 

under attack from the fringes of the 

Liberal Party, particularly Sir Charles 

Dilke, without so much as a public 

rebuke from Gladstone. As Disraeli 

observed, "Her Majesty's new 

Ministers proceeded in their career 

like a body of men under the influence 

of some deleterious drug. Not satiated 

with the spoliation and anarchy of 

Ireland, they began to attack every 

institution and every interest, every 

class and calling in the country." The 

Conservatives were, by contrast, offering 

a tranquil and measured alternative 

to the unstoppable juggernaut of 

Gladstonian Liberalism. By reemphasising 

their loyalty to the 

Disraeli 

monarchy as the pinnacle of Britain's 

institutions, the Conservatives were 

championing the maintenance of a 

constitutional norm that was theoretically 

above Party politics, yet highlighting 

an area of Liberal vulnerability 

. 

In this post-1867 world, with a 

much enlarged electorate, Disraeli 

was making a play for the votes of the 

middle and upper working classes, 

whose instincts were naturally conservative 

- that is, with a small 'c' - and 

who would be more likely to rally to a 

national rather than a class-based banner. 

Not since the death of Palmerston 

in 1865, had the Conservatives been 

presented with such a perfect opportunity, 

in the words of Blake, to "find a 

voice and not an echo". 

Disraeli gave credit to the Liberals 

for carrying out reform in areas where 

it was necessary, but observed that the 

government were running out of 

steam. In a fine turn of phrase which 

deserves to be quoted in full, and was 

considered by Lord Morley, 

Galdstone's official biographer, to be 

"one of the finest classic pieces of the 

oratory of the century" he warned, "as 

I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the 

Ministers reminded me of one of 

those marine landscapes not very 

unusual on the coasts of South 

America. You behold a range of 

exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame 

flickers on a single pallid crest. But 

the situation is still dangerous. There 

are occasional earthquakes, and ever 

and anon the dark rumbling of the 

sea". 

Liberalism, in practice, could not 

be trusted to maintain the constitutional 

status quo or govern responsibly, 

rather "it is to attack the institutions 

of the country under the name of 

reform and to make war on the manners 

and customs of the people of this 

country under the pretext of 

progress". Disraeli dismissed 

Liberalism as 'cosmopolitan' and 'continental', 

an ideology based on 

abstract principles, rather than one 

grounded in reality and serving the 

collective interests of the nation. 

Whilst social reform and adherence to 

empire were certainly of importance, 


Disraeli 

the 'national' theme was perhaps, in 

the short term, the more pertinent in 

persuading uncommitted electors to 

support the Conservatives, in many 

instances for the first time. 

Social Reform 

At Manchester Disraeli stated that, "the 

first consideration of a Minister should 

be the health of the people". This certainly 

appeared to be new ground for 

the Party, although Disraeli had spent a 

large portion of his youthful intellectual 

energies in developing his own 

unique One Nation brand of Toryism, 

with responsibility for the welfare of 

the working man placed on the shoulders 

of his social betters, who, as a 

result of their lofty positions, had a 

duty to look after the lower orders. The 

message from both speeches to the 

newly enfranchised working man was 

not to concern himself with political 

“ Disraeli was making a play for the 

votes of the middle and upper working 

classes, whose instincts were naturally 

conservative ” 

activity and agitation, but instead to 

trust the Conservatives to act on his 

behalf. Disraeli, in jest, placed key 

Conservative principles in the narrow 

context of the Liberal legislative agenda 

by stating that, "the policy of the 

Tory Party - the hereditary, the traditionary 

policy of the Tory Party, that 

would improve the condition of the 

people - is more appreciated by the 

people than all the ineffable mysteries 

and all the pains and penalties of the 

Ballot Bill". Indeed, the people of 

England would be "idiots . . . if, with 

their experience and acuteness, they 

had not long seen that the time has 

arrived when social and not political 

improvement is the object at which 

they should aim". 

Of course, Disraeli was scant on 

detail, preferring to focus on the 

broader picture not delving into 

specifics. On the question of affecting 

some reduction of the working 

man's hours of labour and improving 

working conditions his musings intro- 


duced a subtle caveat, as he mentioned 

the difficulties of "achieving such 

results without violating those principles 

of economic truth upon which the 

prosperity of all States depends," that 

is, cautioning against interference 

with the free market. As the Party was 

to discover to its electoral chagrin a 

generation later, laissez-faire, as the 

economic model and provider of mid- 

Victorian largesse, had acquired a near 

infallible and divine status, with which 

only the foolhardy tampered. 

It is easy to be cynical about 

Disraeli's motives in addressing social 

reform. The Times noted that "Mr 

Disraeli evidently knows the advantages 

of making new alliances" and 

there is, indeed, an element of truth in 

this. Yet in a lofty and idealistic sense, 

he was conscious that Britain's prosperity 

and continued international 

position depended upon a healthy and 

fit population. In turn, for the constitutional 

status quo to continue and 

receive fresh impetus, it was essential 

to bring the working classes into the 

Tory fold and give them a stake in the 

forging of the nation. If it meant that 

working class concerns and grievances 

would be dealt with by a 

Conservative Party that was seen to be 

listening and acting responsibly, rather 

than interfering in their lives and pastimes 

- as was the case with the 

Liberal government and associated 

puritan killjoys - then perhaps this was 

preferable. As Professor Smith 

observes, in relation to the social 

reform strand of the speeches, "there 

was more of the politics of mass sedation 

than of those of mass arousal". 

The Empire 

For Disraeli, the choice England was 

facing was "whether you will be content 

to be a comfortable England, 

modelled and moulded upon 

Continental principles and meeting in 

due course an inevitable fate, or 

whether you will be a great country, an 

Imperial country, a country where 

your sons, when they rise, rise to paramount 

positions and obtain not merely 

the esteem of their countrymen, but 

command the respect of the world". 

Disraeli was certainly on shaky 

ground when championing the 

empire, as he had famously likened 

the colonies, in an earlier age, to “millstones.” 

Politics may be the art of the 

possible, although, in reality, it is more 

often the art of pragmatism, and by 

1872 Disraeli's imperial ideal had 

evolved to that of an empire "with the 

durability of Rome with the adventure 

of Carthage". In this era, with late 

Victorian imperial expansion but a 

few years away, he was linking patriotism 

with the allure of empire and making 

a bid for the imaginations of the 

urban working class. Disraeli sensed 

that the Liberals were vulnerable on 

this issue, as their past conduct had 

affected "the disintegration of the 

empire," pointing to colonial self-government 

as an example. He was not 

opposed to granting self-government 

but asserted that this should be in tandem 

with "a great policy of imperial 

consolidation" and "accompanied by 

an imperial tariff, by securities for the 

people of England for the enjoyment 

of unappropriated lands which belong 

to the Sovereign as their trustee, and 

by a military code which should have 

precisely defined the means and the 

responsibilities by which the Colonies 

should be defended, and by which, if 

necessary, this country should call for 

aid from the Colonies themselves". A 

representative council was canvassed 

"which would have brought the 

Colonies into constant and continuous 

relations with the Home 

Government". 

As with social reform, Disraeli 

shied away from outlining a detailed 

imperial strategy. By highlighting 

these two topical and populist areas he 

was giving the electorate a taste of 

what would follow under a future 

Conservative administration, rather 

than compromising his room for 

manoeuvre at this early stage. Perhaps 

he was heeding the advice of his predecessor, 

Lord Derby, to Lord George 

Bentinck not to start "detailed projects 

in opposition". 

A Precursor for 

Electoral Success? 

"Excellent generalship is a characteristic 

of the Conservative Party, and

has often compensated for numerical 

inferiority", noted The Times after the 

Crystal Palace speech. Whilst for 

Disraeli this statement may have 

seemed obvious - indeed, he had 

established the parliamentary precedent 

after the 1868 General Election 

defeat by resigning rather than facing 

the House as head of a minority 

administration - he was also conscious 

that it was the Party's Achilles’ 

Heel. It was, therefore, imperative 

for the Party's parliamentary base to 

be expanded. Party organisation was 

obviously one way of connecting 

with the ordinary elector in a local 

sense. The other method of reaching 

new voters was by devising a programme 

that was in keeping with the 

instincts and interests of the more 

numerically significant and 

unaligned portion of the electorate, 

whilst retaining the Party's core supporters. 

Disraeli proclaimed at Manchester 

"the Conservative Party are accused of 

having no programme of policy. If by 

a programme is meant a plan to 

despoil churches and plunder landlords, 

I admit we have no programme. 

If by a programme is meant a policy 

which assails or menaces every institution 

and every interest, every class 

and every calling in the country, I 

admit we have no programme." With 

Gladstone's gravitation to a radical 

agenda, politics finally became competitive, 

with the role of champion of 

the national interest now up for grabs. 

The Conservatives, under Disraeli's 

stewardship, were well placed to capitalise 

on the vacuum at the centre and, 

quite crucially, provide choice, a luxury 

denied to the electorate during the 

mid-Victorian period by the presence 

of Palmerston. From his conduct of 

foreign policy down to his physical 

form, Pam was the epitome of John 

Bull, therefore making it exceptionally 

difficult for a Conservative opposition 

to oppose policies that on the 

whole were in line with measures that 

they might have implemented in government. 

Pam's death in 1865 created 

a new electoral opportunity, which by 

1872, with Liberal ineptitude in foreign 

affairs, coupled with their 

unquenchable thirst for reform, 

enabled Disraeli to claim the 

Palmerstonian mantle for the 

Conservatives and assure a harassed 

electorate that a future Tory government 

would augur in a more tranquil 

and stable age. 

The other facets of the 1872 

speeches - social reform and imperialism 

- add a distinct contemporary 

flavour: the former raising issues 

regarding the health and welfare of the 

British people and a precursor to the 

Edwardian national efficiency campaigns, 

whilst the latter policy was one 

with which the Party was to be closely 

identified under Disraeli's successors. 

It is fair to say that Disraeli's 1874-80 

administration is remembered less for 

social reform and more for diplomacy 

and colonial unrest. In fact, the handful 

of social measures introduced, 

owed more to the imagination of 

“ As with social reform, Disraeli shied 

away from outlining a detailed imperial 

strategy ” 

Richard Cross, the Home Secretary, 

than the Prime Minister. Michael 

Howard, in a recent speech to the 

Charities Aid Foundation, discussed 

Disraeli's social legislation, as laying 

the foundations for future Tory commitment 

to social reform, in the context 

of housing, a process which continued 

through the policies of 

Conservative governments in the 

1920s and 1930s, to the establishment 

of local authority social service 

departments by Keith Joseph in the 

1970s. In a symbolic, rather than 

practical sense, Howard is correct to 

identify Disraeli as the source of this 

Conservative social reform tradition, 

especially as this policy area has never 

been the exclusive domain of the centre 

left. With memories of Disraeli 

still relatively fresh, F. E. Smith and a 

future generation of Conservatives 

established the Unionist Social 

Reform Committee in 1911, with 

membership including Stanley 

Baldwin and Samuel Hoare, to discuss 

Disraeli 

ways of resolving social problems that 

had come to a head in the Edwardian 

period. The purpose of such a body, 

according to F.E., was "not only to 

expose and correct the usual crudities 

of Radical-Socialist legislation, but to 

give form to a comprehensive policy 

of social reform". Indeed, echoes with 

the past were still audible in the 1980s 

with the implementation of the 

Children Act 1989 and the 

Community Care Act 1990, two 

measures in the Disraelian tradition 

which illustrate that Margaret 

Thatcher's administration was not 

quite so uncaring as her critics would 

have us believe. In respect of the 

imperial tariff and representative 

council as a means of imperial consolidation, 

Disraeli was airing views that 

would be given greater impetus and 

intellectual credence by Joseph 

Chamberlain. 

Individual policies and choice 

soundbites give the 1872 speeches a 

contemporary feel but Disraeli's most 

significant point was that it was only 

the Conservatives who could deliver 

responsible government, preserve 

ancient institutions, particularly the 

monarchy, and restore national harmony. 

The seizing of the middle 

ground and the long overdue pitch for 

the bourgeois and working class vote 

provided the Conservatives with the 

foundation from which to build a 

long-term electoral base that ultimately 

reached its Victorian zenith under 

Salisbury. With the Liberals plunging 

from crisis to crisis in the remaining 

years of Gladstone's first administration, 

Conservative tactics were to sit 

back and give the government enough 

rope to hang itself. Disraeli had established 

his Party's credibility in 1872, 

and by early 1874 the Party gained, for 

the first time in a generation, a majority, 

and a respectable one at that, of 

fifty seats. 

And what of Disraeli? A Punch cartoon 

published in February 1874 is perhaps 

a fitting epitaph. The new Prime 

Minister is cast in the form of an angel 

in the ascendant, holding his majority 

aloft with the caption reading, "Joy, joy 

for ever! My task is done - the gates are 

passed, and Heaven is won!" 


Lord Derby’s 

shadowy 

Foreign Secretary 

Geoffrey Hicks 

Geoffrey Hicks, Associate Tutor at the 

School of History, University of East 

Anglia, looks at the career of an 

unjustly forgotten Conservative 

Foreign Secretary. 

Posterity has not been 

kind to James Howard 

Harris, third Earl of 

Malmesbury. That is, 

when he has been called 

to the attention of posterity at all. 

Twice Foreign Secretary and a member 

of four Conservative Cabinets, he 

was at the centre of British politics, 

and intermittently European affairs, 

for twenty years. Yet many would 

struggle to name his party's leader, 

his great friend and colleague the 

fourteenth Earl of Derby, let alone the 

self-effacing Hampshire nobleman 

who was his closest lieutenant. 

Malmesbury's more famous colleague, 

Disraeli, has long overshadowed 

both men. Disraeli's great electoral 

victory in 1874, his powerful 

rhetoric, political showmanship and 

novel-writing have understandably 

made him an object of fascination for 

historians. Yet a study of 

Malmesbury's career and contribu- 


tion reveals a rather different picture 

of mid-Victorian Conservatism from 

the Disraeli-dominated one with 

which we are all familiar. 

Lord Malmesbury first came to 

public prominence in 1852. To the 

surprise of many contemporaries, he 

was appointed Foreign Secretary in 

Lord Derby's first government. 

Historians have suggested 

Malmesbury was an odd, even desperate 

choice. But he was in many ways 

the obvious person for the job. He 

was, firstly, a confidant of the 

Conservative leader, and remained so 

until Derby's death in 1869. The two 

aristocrats, strong opponents of Sir 

Robert Peel after he embraced free 

trade in 1846, were close contemporaries 

(Derby was born in 1799; 

Malmesbury in 1807). They shared a 

passion for country sports and built up 

a firm friendship, both personally and 

politically. Malmesbury's first significant 

demonstration of his support for 

Derby had been as one of his whips in 

the House of Lords in the late 1840s, 

when Derby was leading the anti- 

Peelite Protectionist wing of the 

Conservative party. Perhaps 

Malmesbury's most important, if 

unsung, achievement in that role was 

in June 1850. The Whig Foreign 

Secretary, Viscount Palmerston, had 

instigated a blockade of Piraeus harbour 

after the Greek government had 

failed to settle various minor British 

claims for compensation, not least 

those of the unsavoury 'Don' Pacifico. 

At the culmination of the Lords 

debate on the affair, it fell to 

Malmesbury to marshall the opposition 

votes. The Conservatives defeated 

the Whig Government in the division. 

Though the success was of 

course the result of a broad 

Conservative attack on the government 

in the Lords, Malmesbury was 

nevertheless proving himself a useful 

lieutenant. This was of no small 

importance during a period when the 

party had lost prominent frontbenchers 

such as Gladstone and Sir 

James Graham after the split over the 

Corn Laws, and they could call upon 

few able men. 

More importantly in terms of his 

career trajectory, Malmesbury had a 

long acquaintance with and interest in 

foreign affairs. In 1837, for example, 

the young Conservative had published 

a pamphlet attacking Palmerston's foreign 

policy. Palmerston had sent aid 

to the Spanish government, embroiled 

in a civil war. Malmesbury had vigorously 

opposed such interventionism. 

The principle of 'non-interference' in 

the internal affairs of other countries 

was to remain an article of faith for 

him throughout his career. But his 

most important asset was his other 

great lifelong friendship, with Louis 

Napoleon Bonaparte, better known to 

history as Emperor Napoleon III of 

France. The two had been friends 

since they had met as young men, 

when Malmesbury had been on the 

nineteenth century equivalent of the 

'grand tour'. He had even interceded 

on Napoleon's behalf whilst the latter 

had been imprisoned by King Louis 

Philippe's regime. Bonaparte had 

become French president in 1848. 

When Derby's Conservatives took 

power in 1852, Louis Napoleon had 

just overthrown the Second Republic 

in a coup d'état. Malmesbury's 

friendship with the French dictator 

made Derby's close ally the obvious

choice for the Foreign Office. 

Significantly, the mild-mannered conciliatory 

peer also represented the 

antithesis of Palmerston, who revelled 

in controversy and whose confrontational 

approach in foreign policy left 

many Conservatives distinctly uneasy. 

In office, Malmesbury cultivated an 

entente cordiale with France. He used 

his Bonapartist connections. When it 

came to the controversial declaration 

of Napoleon's Second Empire in late 

1852, Malmesbury worked hard to 

maintain European peace. He reassured 

Napoleon of Britain's peaceful 

intentions, and the British public of 

Napoleon's desire for close alliance 

with Britain. By the time Malmesbury 

left office in December 1852 one 

French diplomat boasted of "une 

entente parfaite" with Britain. But the 

Foreign Secretary had worked closely 

with other Great Powers too. Anglo- 

Austrian friendship had been renewed. 

With Russian assistance Britain had 

discouraged Napoleon from attacking 

Belgium. Malmesbury's patient skills 

had also helped to resolve European 

disputes over Greece, Switzerland, 

Tuscany and Schleswig-Holstein. 

After the defeat of the 

Conservative government in 

December 1852, while most of the 

ousted ministers licked their wounds, 

Malmesbury brought his experience 

to bear in opposition. Most importantly, 

he was one of the few 

Conservatives who kept up a sustained 

critique of the Aberdeen's 

coalition's foreign policy as it drifted 

into the Crimean War. He also 

assisted and encouraged Disraeli in 

his efforts to set up a Conservative 

publication, the Press. In his spare 

time, he even amused himself by 

writing for Punch. In 1855, when 

Lord Aberdeen's government collapsed 

in the Crimean quagmire, 

Derby tried - unsuccessfully - to 

form another administration. He 

named Malmesbury as his first 

choice for the Foreign Office. When 

the Conservatives unexpectedly 

returned to power in February 1858, 

after Palmerston's government was 

defeated on the Conspiracy to 

Murder Bill, it was a foregone conclusion 

that he would once more 

oversee foreign policy. 

In 1858, Malmesbury again successfully 

resolved several minor 

European disputes. He also worked 

hard to restrain France as it became 

clear that Napoleon and the 

Piedmontese leader Cavour were colluding 

to oust the Austrians from 

their Italian puppet and satellite 

states. Though Malmesbury and 

Napoleon III of 

France. After his 

successful coup, in 

1852, Malmesbury 

as Britain’s 

Foreign Secretary 

worked hard to 

maintain 

Anglo-French 

relations 

Malmesbury 

Derby were unsuccessful in preventing 

the Franco-Austrian war of 1859, 

they did prevent their critical colleague 

Disraeli (the Chancellor of the 

Exchequer) from initiating a more 

flamboyant policy. Though Disraeli's 

ideas were vague, he favoured a "significant 

demonstration" by Britain, to 

prevent war, instead of Malmesbury's 

quieter diplomatic approach. He 

even secretly worked behind 

Malmesbury's and Derby's backs to 

undermine the government's foreign 

policy. The Prime Minister and 

Foreign Secretary, however, feared 

the consequences of bellicose posturing. 

They were determined to avoid 

Britain being drawn into a conflict. 

They firmly rejected Disraeli's criticisms 

and exposed the flaws in his 

hazy diplomatic logic. Until he 

became Prime Minister in 1868, 

Disraeli played no significant role in 

foreign policy. 

When Derby formed his last government 

in 1866, Malmesbury's illhealth 

prevented a return to the 

Foreign Office. Instead, his post went 

to Derby's son, who maintained the 

same neutral, conciliatory policies. 

Although Malmesbury was Lord 

Privy Seal between 1866 and 1868, 

and in 1874-6, he never returned to 

prominence. In retirement in the 

1880s, he nevertheless attracted a 

brief flurry of publicity when - 

strapped for cash after a late second 

marriage - he published his two-volume 

'Memoirs of an Ex-Minister'. 

The memoir, written in diary form, 

was the only record of the mid- 

Victorian Conservative party published 

by one of its leading participants; 

Derby left no similar volume, 

and Disraeli left only sketchy, unedited 

notes. But, while references to the 

memoirs regularly pop up in historians' 

footnotes, Malmesbury himself 

has largely been forgotten. Yet for 

twenty years he played a key role in 

Conservative politics, diplomacy, 

strategy, organisation and propaganda. 

Examination of his policies and career 

help illuminate an important strand of 

British political opinion with a long 

pedigree and a contemporary resonance. 


The man who would be 

PRIME 

MINISTER 

Sir Stafford Northcote Bart 

1st Earl of Iddesleigh 1818-1887 

Bendor Grosvenor 

Most politicians do 

not reach the top of 

the greasy pole. 

They are either 

then honest in 

acknowledging their political shortcomings, 

or have a ready excuse as to 

why they never quite made it. We 

sympathise, blame or applaud. But 

occasionally we are confronted with 

those who really could have become 

Prime Minister, but either chose to 

ignore the ultimate prize, or were 

denied it by peculiar twists of fate. 

Though such figures are difficult to 

categorize, and harder to judge, they 

allow us an unusual insight into the 

politics of power. 

Stafford Northcote was born the 

grandson of a Devon Baronet of distinctly 

modest means. Though his 

Victorian hagiographer assures us 

that at birth his “planets were all in 

the ascendant”, and that he could read 

by the age of two, the future did not 

seem particularly bright. At Eton he 

was beaten regularly for no particular 

reason, and developed, though not as 

a consequence of the cane, a profound 

religiosity. Severe shortness of 

sight too struck at an early age - 

cricket was out, rowing in. There then 


followed Balliol, a scholarship, and a 

call at the Inner Temple in 1840. 

Lawyerly life was cut short, however, 

when in 1842 Northcote's cane 

wielding former headmaster, one Rev 

Coleridge, recommended him as private 

secretary to William Gladstone, 

the already proven genius then 

President of the Board of Trade in 

Peel's government. “There is no single 

statesman of the present day”, 

wrote Northcote, “to whom I would 

more gladly attach myself.” 1 His new 

job opened up the prospect of a 

career he had “always secretly 

desired” - politics - “…a seat in parliament,” 

he modestly noted, “will 

probably be considered by-and-by 

desirable”. 2 

Before he entered the Commons, 

and besides his secretarial duties, 

Northcote became closely involved 

with the Great Exhibition and Civil 

Service reform. Characteristic overexertion 

in the former brought on the 

first signs of a heart condition that 

would mark his character and dog the 

rest of his life, whilst the latter gave 

him a platform on which to make his 

political reputation. The 1853 

Northcote/Trevelyan report highlighted 

the absurd jobbery within the 

civil service, which was a profession 

reserved for “the unambitious and 

the indolent and incapable”. 

Positions were awarded by possessors 

of patronage, who would 

“bestow the office upon the son or 

dependent of some one having personal 

and political claims upon 

him.” 3 Though this last criticism bore 

a marked similarity to contemporary 

political practice, the 

Northcote/Trevelyan suggestion of 

competitive entry was accepted, and 

the modern civil service was born. 

In the winter of 1855 Northcote 

received the following telegram from 

Gladstone; “If you wish for parliament, 

come up instantly without fail 

to me; if not, answer by telegraph.” 4 

A seat at Dudley, the rather rotten 

borough in the pocket of Lord Ward, 

had fallen vacant following the death 

of its Trollopian incumbent, the 87 

year old Mr Benbow. Within two 

weeks (and would that it were this 

easy today) Northcote was an MP. 

Though a free-trader, fear of the 

Radicals and an admission that he 

was “a rather stiff Conservative” 

obliged Northcote to join those 

Tories who followed the 14th Earl of 

Derby. 

Northcote's early Parliamentary 

career was uneventful, for which we 

can blame Palmerston's political 

domination from 1855-65. Three 

events are perhaps worth noting: in 

1856 he voted against the Jew Bill; in 

1859 he was appointed Financial 

Secretary to the Treasury in Lord 

Derby's brief second administration; 

and in 1861 his stinging attack 

against Gladstone's budget cemented 

his reputation as a politician of the 

first rank. Lord Stanley, no flatterer 

he, thought the speech “the most 

complete parliamentary success that 

I have heard in the twelve years I 

have sat in the House,” and he noted, 

prophetically, that Northcote was 

“marked out for a Chancellor of the 

Exchequer”. 5 

Palmerston's death in 1865 was as 

the uncoiling of a political spring. 

“He held a great bundle of sticks 

together”, Lord Clarendon observed, 

“They are now unloosed, and there is

nobody to tie them up again.” 6 

For the last decade Palmerston 

had been the one barrier between 

England and the Democratic 

flood. As soon as the septuagenarian 

Lord Russell began his 

second spell in Downing Street, 

thirteen years after the first, it 

became clear that a Reform bill 

would be introduced to 

Parliament. The Conservatives 

had merely to find the 40 

Whig/Liberal MPs opposed to 

reform and power would be 

theirs. Few could have predicted, 

however, that within eighteen 

months Derby and Disraeli 

would have passed their own 

Reform bill, one more far reaching 

than anything Russell had 

dared propose. The conservative 

liberalism that, in Whig hands, 

had governed Britain since 

Russell's first ministry of 1846 

would soon be at an end. 

Perhaps mindful of his own 

importance in the events about to 

unfold throughout 1865-6 

Northcote began to keep a diary. 

It is worth dwelling for a 

moment on what he observed in 

his role as one of Disraeli's key 

lieutenants in the parliamentary 

struggle to “dish the Whigs”. 

Through Northcote we learn of 

Disraeli's fear lest Russell's government 

pass even a moderate 

Reform Bill; “such a course”, he 

warned, “would seat the Whigs 

for a lifetime.” 7 He was probably 

right. Reform was in truth as 

much about gerrymandering on 

a massive scale than any philanthropic 

desire to extend the franchise. 

While Disraeli practiced 

the despatch box bravura with 

which he had already brought 

down four governments, 

Northcote was one of those 

deputed to find the MPs needed 

to reverse Russell's majority. In 

fact, there were some fifty 

Whigs and Liberals who might 

vote against Reform - the socalled 

“Adullamites” who coalesced 

around the brilliant oratory 

of a half-blind albino Oxford 

don, Robert Lowe. But unfortunately 

for Disraeli, and even for 

Lord Derby, the Adullamites' 

preferred option was “fusion” - a 

coalition under the leadership of 

Derby's son, Lord Stanley. It is in 

Northcote's diary that we see 

Disraeli at his duplicitous best, 

at once denying Stanley's ability 

or wish to become Premier - 

while in Stanley's diary we read 

of Disraeli pressing “strongly the 

necessity of my [Stanley’s] 

accepting office as Premier if 

called upon.” 8 In Disraeli's 

favour, however, were the many 

Conservative MPs, chief among 

them Northcote, to whom 

Stanley, an agnostic, was unacceptable 

because of his 'unsound' 

stance on Church matters. It is 

thanks largely to these 

'Churchmen' that 'fusion' failed, 

and a purely Conservative government 

was formed. Northcote 

was Disraeli's Vir pietate gravis. 

Northcote joined Derby's third 

government as President of the 

Board of Trade - his first Cabinet 

post. He seems not have a played 

any significant role in shaping 

the Conservatives own reform 

bill of 1867. Disraeli and Derby 

liked to work alone. It is perhaps 

surprising that the basic tenets of 

the bill, with its profound consequences 

for the map of political 

Britain, were agreed by the 

Cabinet in just half a dozen fractured 

meetings; hence the 

description of the bill as a 'leap 

in the dark'. Political survival 

rather than political science 

guided the actions of Derby's 

minority administration. By the 

time the bill had passed close to 

one million voters had gained 

the franchise, and the electorate 

was doubled in size - all of 

which was too much for Lord 

Cranborne, one of the few 

Conservatives to realise just how 

radical, intentionally or not, the 

Reform Bill was. Cranborne's 

resignation meant another promotion 

for Northcote - to 

Secretary of State for India. 

It is as Chancellor of the 

Exchequer in Disraeli's second 

government (1874-80) that 

Northcote is perhaps best 

remembered. It was he who first 

made the income tax permanent, 

it being still improbably collected 

as a 'temporary measure'. His 

budgets are notable for radically 

reducing the national debt, 

through an annual sinking fund, 

whilst at the same time facilitating 

the social legislation passed 

by Disraeli's visionary Home 

Secretary Richard Cross. 

But war, or the threat of war, 

played havoc with Northcote's 

finances (not to mention his 

political loyalties) in the latter 

half of the government. The 

Eastern Crisis of 1875-8 threatened 

at several moments to 

destroy Disraeli's Premiership. 

Following a rebellion in the 

Balkans Russia had declared war 

on the Ottoman Empire in April 

1877. In England the Cabinet 

was split between the Foreign 

Secretary, the 15th Earl of Derby 

(previously Lord Stanley), and 

the Prime Minister. The former, 

concerned with what he saw as 

the real currency of England's 

power - stability, trade and peace 

- held that conditional neutrality 

must be Britain's policy. Disraeli 

on the other hand, desperate for 

glory, prestige, and perhaps even 

war, held a positively hyperbolic 

view of Russian power, and was 

convinced the Tsar's army could 

occupy Constantinople, and even 

sweep through Arabia to seize 

his newly purchased Suez Canal. 

Put simply, Derby and many of 

his colleagues, Northcote 

included, feared that Disraeli's 

bellicose proposals would provoke 

an Anglo-Russian war. 

Thus it was Northcote, intimate 

Disraelian though he professed 

to be, who, sharing Salisbury's 

fear that Disraeli's policy would 

place Britain “on the steep slope 

which leads to war”, 9 suggested 

in December 1877 that Derby 

should “take a lead and give us a 

Northcote 

line of his own.” 10 In the event 

Derby, ever the reluctant politician, 

refused to oust his friend of 

30 years standing, and remained 

instead the brake within Cabinet 

on Disraeli's febrile imagination. 

Both Derby and Northcote 

were critical of Disraeli's policy 

on grounds that we might now 

regard as unusual - cost. Today 

we never consider the cost of 

foreign policy. But during the 

Eastern Crisis Northcote's total 

annual tax revenue was just £75 

million. If you feared, as Derby 

did, that Disraeli “would think it 

quite sincerely in the interests of 

the country to spend 200 million 

on a war if the result of it was to 

make foreign states think more 

highly of us as a military power”, 

then it was easy to see how a 

“spirited foreign policy” could 

severely upset Britain's economic 

prosperity. In addition it 

became apparent from about 

1876 onwards that Britain was 

entering a serious depression. 

Consequently, the £6million vote 

of credit (raised by the government 

in 1878 to pay for potential 

war preparations), and the £5 

million cost of the Zulu war 

(1879), not to mention costs arising 

from the Afghan wars, 

caused “the whole business of 

the Chancellor of the Exchequer 

[to be] thwarted by the course of 

foreign politics.” 11 Perhaps we 

may turn to Gladstone for a typically 

evangelical, but nonetheless 

accurate, reflection of much 

contemporary wisdom: “The 

expenses of a war are the moral 

check which it has pleased the 

almighty to impose upon the 

ambition and the lust of conquest 

that are inherent in so many 

nations.” 

Ultimately, however, it was 

party politics that belatedly 

brought Northcote behind 

Disraeli as the Eastern Crisis 

reached its denouement in early 

1878. A classic weathervane 

politician, Northcote tended to 

move with the prevailing wind, 


Northcote 

and, as the Russians set up camp 

in the suburbs of Constantinople 

elements of the Conservative 

party, the mob, and that great 

Jingo the Queen-Empress herself, 

created such a storm that it 

appeared, in February and March 

1878, that the Government might 

fall if a decided line were not 

taken against the Russians. 

Northcote could not afford to 

view politics with the same disinterested 

hauteur as Derby, a 

wealthy and powerful peer. 

Northcote had, after all, spent 

most of his political career in 

opposition, and he did not relish 

the thought of once more returning 

to the cold side of the House. 

It was not war that Northcote 

feared most in 1878, but a “disastrous… 

division of the 

Cabinet.” 13 

1881, in which year Disraeli 

died, raised an altogether 

thornier question - who was to 

lead the Tories? Northcote had 

easily seen off his only rival to 

the Commons leadership, 

Gathorne Hardy, when in 1876 

Disraeli took ermine as the comfortable 

flannel to his old age 

and elevated himself to the 

Elysian fields. And as the place 

to attack Gladstone's new government 

was in the Commons, 

not the Lords, then Salisbury's 

peerage seemed a sordid boon. 

Though the party leadership was 

a “dual” one, it was Northcote 

who initially led the opposition. 

The problem came, however, 

in Northcote's style of leadership. 

Despite his sometimes tortuous 

ability to see both sides of 

any argument, which left 

Salisbury for one “in a weak 

frame of mind”, 14 Northcote was 

popular and trusted in the 

Commons. He possessed that 

inestimable political quality, 

“soundness.” But since his thirties 

Northcote had suffered a 

serious “heart disease… he 

knows it and… at any moment it 

may cut him down.” 14 The 

uncomfortable knowledge that 

too much excitement could kill 

him accounts for his calm and 

conciliatory political manner - 

an advantage in government, but 

quite the reverse in opposition. 

In addition, Northcote's strategy 

was aimed at separating the 

dwindling and disaffected Whigs 

from Gladstone and the Liberals. 

But here we can perhaps see a 

man who, though in the prime of 

his career, was out of his time. 

Following the 1867 Reform Act 

the parliamentary politics 

favoured by Disraeli were in 

many ways redundant. As 

Salisbury noted, “Power is more 

and more leaving parliament and 

going to the platform.” 15 

A small group of young and 

vigorous Tory MPs, dubbed the 

“Fourth Party” and more attuned 

to the demand of modern politics, 

emerged as severe critics of 

Northcote's leadership. 

Northcote was “no more a match 

for Mr Gladstone than a wooden 

three-decker would be a match 

for a dreadnought” said one - an 

unjust quip - but in coming from 

A. J. Balfour, nephew of “Bob” 

Salisbury, we can see how the 

covert battle for the party leadership 

was conducted. By the time 

Gladstone's government was 

defeated on the nominal issue of 

the 1885 budget it was apparent 

that Northcote's stock had fallen, 

and Salisbury's had risen. 

Northcote, it seems, did little to 

rally support for his Prime 

Ministerial candidacy in the crucial 

days of June 1885. And yet, in 

many ways one can hardly blame 

him. The Conservative party could 

not ultimately decide between him 

or Salisbury. The choice was the 

Queen's. Victoria had so often told 

Northcote that she looked to him 


to form the next Conservative government, 

this being the course recommended 

by her beloved 

Disraeli, that he perhaps made the 

fatal assumption that power would 

be his. Quite why Victoria chose 

Salisbury without so much as “a 

word of sympathy or regret” 16 to 

Northcote has yet to be fully 

explained. 

Northcote apparently became 

so emotional at hearing the disastrous 

news that he had to leave the 

room. It was in fact the deathblow 

to a career that henceforth collapsed 

in a series of undignified 

events justly described as “pantomimic”. 

Lord Randolph 

Churchill, one of Northcote's 

Fourth Party tormentors, forced 

his removal from the Commons. 

When asked what title he would 

take if a peerage were offered 

him, Northcote had always said 

“Done For” was the only suitable 

one he could think of. He chose 

“ Northcote was popular and trusted in the 

Commons. He possessed that inestimable 

political quality, ‘soundness’ ” 

instead a familial title, and 

became Earl of Iddesleigh. The 

consolation prize of First Lord of 

the Treasury, an office normally 

held by the Prime Minister, 

looked, in truth, a little desperate. 

And during Salisbury's second 

government Northcote's brief 

tenure of the Foreign Office 

ended in ignominy when he 

learned, through the columns of 

the Standard, that he would be 

replaced to facilitate a coalition 

with the Liberal Unionists. 

Deeply hurt, again, Northcote signalled 

by curt one-line telegrams 

that he would never again serve in 

Salisbury's Cabinet. 

After his final day at the 

Foreign Office, on 12th January 

1887, Northcote walked across 

Downing Street to see the Prime 

Minister. When outside the 

Premier's office he suddenly collapsed. 

Twenty minutes later he 

was dead. “I had never happened 

to see anyone die before”, 

Salisbury wrote, “…just before 

the sudden parting… I had, I 

believe, for the first time in my 

life, seriously wounded his feelings. 

As I looked upon the dead 

body stretched before me, I felt 

that politics was a cursed profession.” 

17 Northcote had succumbed 

to the long-threatened 

heart condition which had for so 

long governed his temperament, 

political approach and modus 

operandi. Northcote's health 

must, it seems, account for his 

reluctance and inability to play the 

political role that his intellect and 

talent had for so long promised. 

On such things does history turn. 

1 Life, Letters, and Diaries of Sir Stafford 

Northcote First Earl of Iddesleigh, by Andrew 

Lang, 2 Volumes, 1890. Vol 1 p 55 quoting 

Northcote to his father, 21st June 1842 

2 Lang Vol 1 p 57 quoting Northcote to a 

Mr Shirley 30th June 1842 

3 Lang Vol 1 p 103-4, quoting the report in 

each case 

4 Lang Vol 1 p 109, telegram sent February 

26th 1855 

5 Lord Stanley to Northcote, May 3rd 1861, 

Iddesleigh Papers, British Library. 

6 Lord Clarendon to Lord Granville 21st 

October 1865, 'Life of the 2nd Earl Granville' 

by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice p 487 

7 Northcote's diary February 22nd 1866 

Iddesleigh Papers British Library f72 

8 'Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative 

Party, the Journals of Lord Stanley' (ed. 

John Vincent) entry for 28th April 1866 

9 Salisbury to Northcote 15th December 

1877, 'Life of Robert, Third Marquis of 

Salisbury', by Lady Gwendolen Cecil 

10 Northcote to Salisbury 14th December 

1877, Hatfield Archive, Letters from SHN 

to Ld S f123 

11 Lang, vol 2 p 98 

12 Richard Cross to Mary, Countess of Derby, 

29th October 1877, Hatfield Archive Mary 

Derby Papers, MCD 80 ff53 

13 Salisbury to Lord Carnarvon 15th 

February 1874 Carnarvon Papers, British 

Library, Add 60758 f127 

14 Lord Carnarvon's diary 5th April 1877 

British Library Carnarvon Papers Add 

60909 

15 Andrew Roberts 'Salisbury, Victorian 

Titan', London 1999 p 248 

16 Roberts p 325 

17 Roberts, p 427, quoting Salisbury to Lord 

Randolph Churchill

Party 

colours 

John Barnes 

John Barnes is the co-editor of the Conservative History Journal 

and a noted writer on Conservative politics and politicians 

When the author 

was adopted as 

PPC for Walsall 

North in 1963, he 

was despatched 

on his first canvass with a blue 

rosette. He was immediately greeted 

by a lady in the street who rushed 

over, kissed him, and said I've waited 

thirty years (a slight exaggeration) to 

see a Liberal candidate in Walsall. 

Returning to the office, I asked the 

obvious question and was told that 

traditionally the Conservatives had 

used red, the Liberals blue and labour 

yellow or latterly yellow and red. We 

immediately determined on a red, 

white and blue rosette, with blue and 

white on the manifesto cover. But in 

the committee rooms, the boards 

recording the canvassing returns, 

which were then used to record who 

had voted in preparation for "knock- 

ing up", were still marked off red for 

Conservatives and blue for all others. 

It was a salutary reminder that, 

although the National Union had 

decided to standardise on blue 

on 17 March 1949, they had 

no way in which to enforce 

their decision. 

In fact red has considerable 

claims to be the 

colour of the Tory 

party. This was said to 

be because it was the 

racing colour of Lord 

Derby, who led the 

party, initially in the 

Lords only, from 1844 

until February 1868. 

That would certainly 

appear to be the reason 

why it was so widely used 

in the north-west. However, 

as Geoffrey Block observes, 

the use of the colour red can be 

traced to the 17th century, and during 

the exclusion crisis it was the colour 

of those who supported the Crown 

against the Whigs, who used blue. 

When Gladstone stood as a 

Conservative at Newark in 1832, he 

had a Red Club enthusiastically 

working for him. He was presented 

with a banner of red silk and an 

address from the ladies, who 

expressed "their conviction that the 

good old Red cause was the salvation 

of their ancient borough". 

There were large tea parties to enlist 

the support of "Red Ladies", while 

Red inns dispensed rather more 

intoxicating beverages to Red voters 

and a Red band was paid 15/- a day 

to play. 

When H.G.Wells wrote The New 

Machiavelli in 1910, he recalled the 

election four years earlier when the 

Liberals had swept the board: "The 

London World reeked with the 

General Election; it had invaded the 

nurseries. All the children of one's 

friends had got big maps of England 

divided up into squares to represent 

constituencies, and were busy stick-

Part Colours 

ing gummed blue labels over the conquered 

red of Unionism that had 

hitherto submerged the country. And 

there were also orange labels, if I 

remember rightly, to represent the 

new Labour party, and green for the 

Irish." 

In 1927 an extant Central Office 

record suggests that red remained the 

colour of at least sixty three English 

and Welsh seats. Red was the colour 

“ In fact red has considerable claims to 

be the colour of the Tory party. This was 

said to be because it was the racing 

colour of Lord Derby ” 

in Northumberland, County Durham, 

in much of Cheshire, in Liverpool 

and in Birkenhead. But it was also 

the colour in at least two seats in 

Staffordshire and three in 

Worcestershire and it was also to be 

found in West Wales. Seven of the ten 

divisions in Middlesex also used red. 

As late as 1964, red remained the 

colour of choice for many of the constituencies 

north of the Tees. 

Geoffrey Block identified 37 constituencies 

in all that continued to use 

it. 

When, in March 1961, the 

Bromley Association resolved to 

“ When Gladstone fought Greenwich 

as a Liberal in 1874, the two 

Conservative candidates used crimson 

and Gladstone blue, while the Radical in 

compliment to his Home Rule supporters 

adopted Green ” 

change its colours from orange and 

purple to royal blue, a survey of the 

associations in Kent revealed that 

seven used orange and purple, ten 

blue, one blue and white, and one red, 

white and blue. From knowledge of 

Royal Tunbridge Wells, it is probable 

that what the survey took to be 

orange was in fact gold and that these 


were the Abergavenny colours of purple 

and gold. In 1927 these were the 

Conservative colours in virtually all 

the Kent and Surrey constituencies, 

and they could be found also in two 

divisions in Sussex and three in 

Hampshire. Many of the south 

London boroughs like Lewisham and 

Lambeth were also sailing under 

those colours. About forty constituencies 

in all appeared to be using 

them. 

In Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, 

Rutland, the Isle of Ely and parts of 

Norfolk in the 1920s pink was the 

dominant colour, although in 

Cambridgeshire it was coupled with 

white, in three of the Norfolk divisions 

with purple and in Grantham 

with red. The use of pink was still 

evident in the 1960s, although by 

then North Norfolk had moved to 

blue and Grantham to blue and 

gold. Pink and white were also 

Disraeli's colours when he first 

stood for parliament at Wycombe in 

1832. 

Yellow, in general not a 

Conservative colour - Trollope used it 

when contesting Beverley as a 

Liberal in 1868 was, however, the 

colour of the Lowther family and it is 

no surprise to find that Cumberland 

and Westmoreland Conservatives 

followed suit, leaving blue to the 

Liberals. That remained the case into 

the 1960s. Further north in Scotland, 

where colours were reported, they 

were predominantly red, white and 

blue. 

There were also some unusual 

combinations to be found in 1927. 

The two divisions in Lambeth used 

orange and Rugby was still doing so 

as late as 1959. Camborne coupled 

black and yellow and Brighton purple 

and primrose. 

When Gladstone fought 

Greenwich as a Liberal in 1874, the 

two Conservative candidates used 

crimson and Gladstone blue, while 

the Radical in compliment to his 

Home Rule supporters adopted 

Green. In the course of the next half 

century, Labour took over red while 

the Conservatives moved to scarlet 

and white. However, perhaps as a 

result of the appearance of a 

Communist candidate at the 1931 

election, Labour shifted to red and 

yellow and the Conservatives decided, 

in the absence of a Liberal candidate, 

to use blue in 1935. 

Interestingly, where, as a result of 

the National Government, 

Conservative and liberal 

Associations joined forces, they 

often adopted blue and yellow as 

their colours and in 1959, eleven 

constituencies retained what historically 

had been the personal colours 

of Charles James Fox. 

In the course of the 20th century 

the general trend was towards the use 

of blue, hence no doubt the decision 

of the Central Council in 1949. That 

may well have been a mistake. Blue is 

not a good colour for a poster and the 

arrival of 'dayglo' confirmed that 

orange, and to a lesser extent, red 

were far better. But it was not possible 

to backtrack. Figures collected in 

1959 showed how far standardisation 

had gone. Out of the 547 constituencies 

in England, 368 were using blue, 

31 blue and white and a further 13 

'royal blue'. Add in the blue and yellows 

(11) and over three quarters 

were broadly in conformity to the 

party's will. Preston was already 

using the currently fashionable combination 

of blue and orange and 

Gower coupled green with blue and 

white. The number using red, white 

and blue had declined slightly to 35, 

while 37 continued to adhere to the 

traditional red. In Scotland, conformity 

had gone still further. No less than 

55 constituencies adhered to blue, 

five to the traditional red, white and 

blue and three national Liberal or 

Liberal Unionist Associations 

returned their colours as blue and yellow. 

For the remainder of the century 

and beyond, blue has continued to 

be the norm, with orange on blue 

used almost universally for posters. 

The once varied range of constituency 

colours has passed into 

history and the suggestion that red 

was once the colour of the Tory 

party today meets with incredulity 

or incomprehension.

Book Reviews 

The Intellectual Conservative 

Mark Garnett celebrates Michael Oakeshott, one of the greatest conservative thinkers of modern times 

Oakeshott on 

History 

Luke O'Sullivan 

Imprint Academic 

£25 

In Defence of 

Modernity 

Efraim Podoksik 


£25 

Michael 

Oakeshott on 

Hobbes 

Ian Tregenza 


£25 

The Sceptical 

Idealist 

Roy Tseng 


£25 

The intellectual reputation of 

Michael Oakeshott (1901-90) 

has been a source of pride to 

Conservatives - and of irritation 

to the Left - since he succeeded 

Harold Laski as Professor of 

Political Science at the LSE in 

1951. His appointment to that 

Fabian foundation seemed to 

mark a dramatic shift in the 

intellectual climate, to accompany 

the decline and fall of the 

Attlee Government. Laski had 

never concealed his passionate 

commitment to socialism. 

Oakeshott could not have provided 

a starker contrast, in his 

writings and his teaching. To 

critics who could read between 

the lines, it was obvious that he 

despised everything that 

Labour stood for. But instead of 

engaging directly with Laski's 

legacy, Oakeshott presented his 

own views in a style which 

seemed both elegant and evasive. 

Despite his disdain for 

polemical encounters, 

Oakeshott was identified as 

something of a court philosopher 

during the Thatcher years, 

with an assured status even if 

he refused to dance attendance. 

For Thatcherites his reputation 

was sufficient to rebut any allegation 

that they belonged to 'the 

stupid party'. Since his death - 

in the month following 

Thatcher's removal from office 

- that reputation has grown further, 

on both sides of the 

Atlantic. One commentator has 

gone so far as to acclaim him as 

“the greatest political philoso- 

pher in the Anglo-Saxon tradition 

since John Stuart Mill - or 

even Burke”. There is now a 

burgeoning Oakeshott industry, 

which includes a commemorative 

association and a website. 

The four books under review 

are the first products of a special 

Oakeshott series, issued by 

the publisher Imprint Academic 

which is building an impressive 

list of studies in the work of 

major British philosophers. 

But is all this fuss justified? 

These books certainly confirm 

that Oakeshott's philosophical 

writings are difficult enough to 

require elucidation for a wider 

audience, and sufficiently 

important to make the effort 

worthwhile. Although he was too 

wise to construct a system, the 

various authors succeed in presenting 

his work as a broadly 

coherent attempt to fathom some 

aspects of the mystery of experience. 

Yet in one respect the precise 

nature of his reputation 

remains a puzzle. Oakeshott 

clearly regarded the 

Conservative Party as Britain's 

most promising bulwark against 

socialism: but it is equally evident 

that he was not himself a 

conservative. Three of the present 

authors shed new light on 

his liberalism. The exception - 

Roy Tseng - only succeeds in 

emphasising Oakeshott's clear 

divergence from the traditions of 

Locke, Kant and Bentham. But 

this by no means exhausts the 

varieties of liberal ideology, and 

Efraim Podoksik is much more 

persuasive in linking Oakeshott 

to other (half-forgotten) 

European liberal thinkers, 

notably von Humboldt who also 

influenced Mill. 

From this perspective, the 

title of Oakeshott's most cele- 

“ These books certainly confirm that 

Oakeshott's philosophical writings are 

difficult enough to require elucidation for a 

wider audience, and sufficiently important 

to make the effort worthwhile ” 

brated essay, 'On being 

Conservative' (from the 1962 

volume, Rationalism in Politics) 

could be regarded as a red herring 

in the ideological battles of 

the last half-century. It reads 

like a deliberate piece of mischief, 

typical of this puckish 

philosopher in his off-duty 

moments. Bernard Crick was 

scarcely guilty of caricature 

when he summarised 

Oakeshott's formula as: “whenever 

so-and-so sensible is preferred 

to such-and-such silly, 

that is what I mean by being 

conservative'. Yet the popularity 


Book Reviews 

of the essay among post-war 

Conservatives does help us understand 

ideological change within 

their party. The Oakeshottian 

'Conservative' might admire traditional 

practices, but he is an individualist, 

secure within his own skin 

and perfectly equipped for 

autonomous existence in the modern 

world - if only the state would leave 

him alone. This is a distinctively liberal 

vision, but it amounts to something 

like an ideal self-image for 

many contemporary Conservatives. 

Oakeshott's writings on history 

also illustrate the liberal character 

of his thought. In his volume on this 

subject, Luke O'Sullivan traces 

Oakeshott's developing ideas with 

commendable clarity, drawing on 

“ Ian Tregenza's meticulous study 

shows how Oakeshott deployed 

selective readings of Hobbes to support 

his own developing ideas ” 

unpublished manuscripts and 

enlivening his account with biographical 

snippets. Oakeshott originally 

trained as an historian, and he 

included valuable reflections on the 

subject in Experience and its Modes 

(1933). But in On Human Conduct 

(1975) he expounded a view of the 

past which fell short of the exacting 

standards which he had set for historical 

writing. He presented a highly 

schematic story about the development 

of European individualism, 

in order to characterise rival understandings 

of the state: one, as a 

'civil association', in which individuals 

pursue their own goals under a 

general framework of rules, and the 

other as a compulsory 'enterprise 

association', where the population is 

directed towards common goals. 

There could be no doubt as to 

Oakeshott's personal preference, 

and as a finishing touch he skewed 

his 'evidence' to imply that the idea 

of 'civil assocation' was older as 

well as better than the alternative. 

If Oakeshott's view of the past 


begs more questions than it answers, 

it also encouraged students to reexamine 

some of the classics of 

political theory. The most notable 

beneficiary of Oakeshott's revisionism 

was the unlikely figure of 

Thomas Hobbes. Ian Tregenza's 

meticulous study shows how 

Oakeshott deployed selective readings 

of Hobbes to support his own 

developing ideas. Far from being an 

apologist for over-mighty rulers, in 

Oakeshott's hands Hobbes turns out 

to have been a champion of 'civil 

association'; his Leviathan might be 

strong where strength is needed, but 

there is no question of the state 

imposing priorities on the populace. 

In part, this sympathetic view of 

Hobbes seems to have been inspired 

by Oakeshott's feeling that Hobbes 

was a kindred spirit. This encouraged 

him to overlook awkward features 

of Leviathan - for example, it 

would be difficult to square Hobbes' 

picture of acquisitive human nature 

with Oakeshott's 'Conservative' disposition 

- but, as Tregenza shows, 

his work has inspired other scholars 

to present a more nuanced understanding 

of the Sage of 

Malmesbury. 

The most debatable aspect of 

Oakeshott's interpretation is his 

attempt to deny the orthodox view 

that Hobbes was a pioneer of the 

Enlightenment. Unlike most liberals 

who venerate the Enlightenment, 

Oakeshott believed that it introduced 

a 'rationalist' approach which 

(among other things) infected politics 

and promoted the idea of the 

state as an 'enterprise association'. 

His antipathy to the 'Enlightenment 

Project' has encouraged recent commentators 

to classify Oakeshott as a 

precursor of postmodernism. Among 

the present authors, Roy Tseng 

comes closest to this position. Yet 

Efraim Podoksik is a better guide to 

understanding Oakeshott's work in 

the appropriate context. In a wideranging 

and perceptive account, 

Podoksik presents Oakeshott as a 

defender of modernity, despite his 

acute awareness of its various dilemmas. 

The debate about Oakeshott and 

postmodernism is reflected in the 

tension in his work, where optimism 

and nostalgia always seem to be 

wrestling for supremacy. The explanation 

seems to lie in Oakeshott's 

encounter with the modern world, 

which was as partial as Hobbes' 

contact with Restoration England. 

As an academic who was well 

rewarded for conducting civilised 

conversations with intelligent young 

people, he could consider himself to 

be fortunate. But he came to feel 

increasingly isolated in holding the 

view that education was an activity 

which should be prized for its own 

sake. From this perspective, the 

increasing emphasis on 'vocational' 

study after 1979 was part of the 

same 'rationalist' enterprise which 

Oakeshott had been attacking since 

the 1940s. By that time Oakeshott 

himself was living in retirement in 

Dorset, and never made public his 

intellectual distance from the 

Thatcherites who praised him. 

The contents of these books overlap 

and their interpretations are different; 

but taken together they make 

a thought-provoking read. Although 

no student of Oakeshott's work can 

ignore the question of ideological 

allegiance, the collective effort of 

the authors suggests that his political 

writings are less important than 

his earlier reflections on the nature 

of knowledge. Oakeshott began his 

career when the main hazard for 

philosophers was negotiating a way 

between the backwash of 

Hegelianism and the spring-tide of 

logical positivism. His highly distinctive 

response to this dilemma 

justifies a high ranking among 

twentieth-century British philosophers, 

even if a place alongside Mill 

seems too lofty. Hopefully 

Oakeshott's true status will be consolidated 

soon by an authoritative 

biography, based on full access to 

private papers. 

Mark Garnett, an historian and 

biographer is a regular contributor 

to the Conservative History 

Journal.

The Mosleys – Churchill’s dilemma 

Ronald Porter Examines a new biography of a controversial Mitford sister 

Diana Mosley 

Anne de Courcy 

Chatto & 

Windus 

£20 

Sir Oswald and 

Diana Mosley in 

1972 

'You are all the world to me'. 

These were the last words 

Lady Diana Mosley [1910- 

2003] spoke to the dying Sir 

Oswald [1896-1980] at their 

home near Paris on the night 

of 2nd December 1980. Anne 

de Courcy's Diana Mosley has 

much new material in it and it 

is a more honest account than 

her subject's autobiography, A 

Life of Contrasts . The theme of 

de Courcy's book could easily 

be summed up in those final 

seven seven words spoken by 

Diana Mosley to her 'darling 

Kit' on his death bed. She was 

utterly devoted to a man who 

was essentially a rogue. And 

that goes for his public as well 

as his private life. 

Anne de Courcy is, of 

course, no stranger to the 

Mosleys. In her previous book , 

The Viceroy’s Daughters: The 

Lives of the Curzon Sisters, 

Lady Cynthia Curzon's short 

life [1898-1933] is admirably 

set out. She was Mosley's first 

wife. They married in 192. 

King George V and Queen 

Mary were among the wedding 

guests. Lady Cynthia died, 

officially, from an infection 

after an appendix operation. 

But as de Courcy makes clear, 

she really died from a broken 

heart after finding out about 

Diana's affair with Mosley. 

Diana was quite open with de 

Courcy about all this, and 

much more. She gave the 

author access to all her correspondence 

and private papers. 

Even Diana's two sons by her 

first marriage, in 1929, as the 

Book Reviews 

Hon. Diana Mitford, to a scion 

of the beerage, Bryan Guinness 

- helped her. As did her two 

sons by her marriage to 

Mosley, Alexander and Max. 

They were born after her marriage 

to Mosley took place in 

the Goebbels' drawing room in 

Berlin in 1936. Adolf Hitler 

was one of the guests. The 

overall result is a book which 

outshines all previous biographies 

of Diana. It is very strong 

on the personal and emotional 

lives of the Mosleys. For example, 

we are told that Mosley 

had a long affair with his first 

wife's sister. We are even told 

of the reasons behind the nicknames 

the Mosleys addressed 

to each other. He was 'Kit' 

and Diana was 'Percher', 

prison notwithstanding. And if 


Book Reviews 

you want to know, as I certainly did, 

how much they paid for their main 

Paris home, the Temple de la 

Gloire, and how much profit Diana 

made on its sale in 2000, you will 

find all the answers in the book. 

Where the book fails us is in 

political sphere. De Courcy is good 

at telling us who Diana's favourite 

prison wardens were in Holloway. 

But she does not deal, as adequately 

as I would have liked, with the 

politics of fascism or the problems 

the Mosleys presented to Churchill 

[ a distant kinsman of Diana's ] and 

a democratic nation fighting for its 

very survival in 1940. As the leader 

of the British Union Of Fascists, 

“ Another drawback of the book is that 

it does not deal in any way with the 

problem of anti-democratic parties, like 

the communists and fascists, using all 

the advantages of free speech in a 

civilised and mature capitalist 

democracy, to gain power, and then 

kicking away the ladder once the goal 

has been achieved ” 

Mosley could see the war coming 

before 1939. As a slavish devotee 

of Hitler, he wanted Britain to keep 

out of it . He led campaigns to this 

effect. But when war came, he 

changed his stance. Although he 

wanted a 'negotiated peace' [whatever 

that was supposed to mean] he 

did urge his followers to support 

the civil power in every way and to 

try and repel any invaders. Many 

fascists rallied to the cause and 

joined up. The British Communists 

took a different line. Before the 

Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, they 

were anti-fascist at home and 

abroad. We all know about the trouble 

they caused at Mosley's meetings 

because he was not 'allowed' 

free speech. And we know about 

some of the brave Communists, like 


Jack Jones, who fought against 

Franco in the Spanish Civil War. 

When the Stalin - Hitler pact 

emerged, they changed their tune. 

Suddenly, they all became pacifists, 

albeit that they still tried to break 

up Mosley's lawful meetings. We 

should not, they argued, have anything 

to do with the war or fight for 

an army which was furthering a 

war. Many communists preferred to 

continue with their favourite hobby 

of infiltrating the Labour Party and 

the trade unions, which were weakend 

because of the Call-Up and the 

Churchill Coalition with Labour. As 

soon as Hitler broke the non-agression 

pact, the Communists were 

told by Moscow to change their 

tune yet again. They advocated an 

all out war against Germany and the 

'evils of nazism'. They were as 

silent as the driven snow about the 

'evils of communism'. 

Poweful Labour barons in the 

Churchill coalition, like Morrison 

and Ernie Bevin, were always anti - 

Mosley. He was regarded as a turncoat, 

having resigned from 

Macdonald's government in the early 

thirties. He was also regarded as a 

rabble rouser and as someone who 

could split the working class vote. 

They were entirely sympathetic to 

calls from the communists inside and 

outside the Labour party and trade 

union movement to imprison Mosley. 

Churchill, anxious to keep up a united 

political front at home, very reluctantly 

endorsed the decision to 

imprison the Mosleys, who were 

perceived as fifth columnists. He was 

always uneasy about doing this. But 

then he had bigger fish to fry and we 

were at war with Germany and not 

the Soviet Union. In 1943, he was 

finally successful in pressurising the 

stubborn and myopic Morrison to 

release them. A lot of the political 

background needs more treatment in 

the book. The ties between the 

Labour Party, the trade unions and 

the Communists need spelling out. 

The Mosleys were absolutely RIGHT 

to feel they were being picked on 

when compared with the mayhem 

the communists were covertly caus- 

ing . The author moans about the 

Mosleys' 'poor conditions' in prison, 

albeit that they were allowed food, 

wines and liquers from their Harrods 

Account and were able to pay other 

prisoners to do domestic chores for 

them in their married quarters! Now 

would Mosley have allowed, for one 

minute, any of his opponents such a 

pampered life style had he been 

where Churchill was in 1940? It is an 

absolutey crucial question which the 

author should have asked herself. 

You only have to look at the Nazi 

concentration camps to see what 

Mosley would have done to 

Churchill. 

Another drawback of the book is 

that it does not deal in any way with 

the problem of anti-democratic parties, 

like the communists and fascists, 

using all the advantages of 

free speech in a civilised and 

mature capitalist democracy, to gain 

power, and then kicking away the 

ladder once the goal has been 

achieved . The author told me when 

her book came out that if she had 

gone into this aspect “it would have 

been a different sort of book”. 

Different, yes. But also a lot better. 

And while we are on the subject of 

making it better, she should have 

done some more homework. Violet 

Bonham Carter was a great many 

things during her long life. But 

being an MP was NOT one of them. 

She also gets the the Mosley vote 

wrong for the 1966 General 

Election. And she is wrong about 

the day of the month in which it was 

held. I also think she should have 

read Trevor Grundy's excellent 

book A Fascist Childhood. She told 

me she had not read it. What a 

great pity. Had she read it, before 

writing her Homage to Diana, she 

might have been less peronally 

effusive about the woman who liked 

and admired Hitler and Himmler 

'very much'. Grundy's book has the 

absolute ring of truth about it. In it, 

the Mosleys come over as selfish, 

ignorant and snobbish even 

towards their own most ardent and 

steadfastly loyal little band of sad 

admirers.

What were they saying . . . ? 

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